Archive for Steve George
I've been involved with Baldrige since writing my first award application in 1989. I have worked with five Baldrige Award winners and several state award winners and have researched, written, edited, and evaluated dozens of Baldrige assessments. I've also written four Baldrige-related books, been a Baldrige examiner, provided Baldrige training, and written and edited Baldrige case studies. My goal for Baldrige.com is to create an online community for sharing information and best practices, answering questions, and elevating the quality of the organizations we buy from, work for, supply, and get services from. Our vision is: Every Organization a Baldrige Organization!
Baldrige Expands Reach to Small Businesses
The Baldrige program is expanding its reach to small businesses through a new collaboration with the Alliance for Performance Excellence and The Alternative Board (TAB). The Alliance is a nonprofit network of national, state, and local Baldrige-based award programs. TAB provides peer advisory boards and coaching services for small business leaders.
According to a press release from the Baldrige program, the state programs will work with TAB boards across the country to help small business operators learn the Baldrige Criteria and use the Criteria to assess and improve performance.
The new effort drew praise from Terry May, president of MESA Products, a 2006 Baldrige Award recipient in the small business category. “TAB is a great resource for learning and sharing with my peers,” May said, “providing real-world, practical guidance to help me improve and grow my business. The Baldrige process, both at the state and national levels, helped me take MESA to an even higher level of performance and achieve breakthrough results. So, a partnership between local TAB boards and state Baldrige programs will be a great resource for small businesses.”
The collaboration between the Baldrige program and the Alliance is another indicator of the new relationship between the programs. Earlier this month, the Baldrige program…
29Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedHelp Bootstrap My Baldrige Project
What do world-class hospitals and medical centers do differently? What can the hospitals and medical centers we use learn from them?
To answer these questions, I’ve launched a new project on Kickstarter to research and write a book called The Road to World-Class Healthcare. You can watch a video introducing the project and read a complete description of it here. The key to the book is the research: road trips to 20 to 25 world-class hospitals and medical centers across the country to interview leaders and learn about best practices.
To fund the research, I’ve posted the project on Kickstarter. A Kickstarter project succeeds by gaining backers who pledge financial support in exchange for rewards. Your reward for becoming a backer of The Road to World-Class Healthcare includes exclusive access to audio excerpts of key interviews, photos, and video of best practices. Invest more and the rewards increase. You can find the complete list of rewards here.
One of the reasons for posting this project on Kickstarter, other than to help fund the research, is to see if it can generate interest. If it meets the goal, the book will be written, and that book will appeal to mainstream publishers who expect authors to…
27Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedNew Conditions for Baldrige Award Eligibility
The Baldrige program has announced new conditions for applying for the Baldrige Award. In addition to the existing eligibility requirements—i.e., headquartered in the U.S., in existence for at least one year, able to share information, and categorized as a business, educational institution, healthcare organization, or nonprofit—an organization must meet one of the following conditions to apply for the Baldrige Award:
- Be a previous Baldrige Award recipient
- Have received the top-tier award from a member of the Alliance for Performance Excellence within the past 5 years
- Have received a Baldrige site visit within the past five years
- Have received a combined scoring band range of 8 or better in the past five years
- Have 25% or more of its employees outside the organization’s home state
- Have no Alliance member program available for your organization
The new requirements “leverage the larger Baldrige enterprise—in particular, the state and local Baldrige-based award programs,” according to Harry Hertz, Baldrige program director. The new requirements will compel first-time applicants to use their state programs unless one is not available, which is currently true for just one state: Utah. You will find a complete list of state and local award programs here.
The change will likely strengthen the state programs while reducing the number of applicants…
21Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedPlan Now to Integrate Baldrige
As a new year approaches, many organizations are finalizing plans to begin or continue their Baldrige journeys. Most will not apply for an award, but rather begin using the Baldrige criteria to evaluate and improve performance. I’m often asked by those new to Baldrige about the best way to integrate Baldrige and what resources are required to make it effective.
From my experience, the introduction to Baldrige often begins with training. Senior leaders need to understand what Baldrige is and how it can help their organizations. They need to know what is involved in a Baldrige assessment so that they can allocate resources, set goals and expectations, and provide ongoing support. And they need to establish processes for reviewing the results of the assessment, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, and developing action plans.
The only way to effectively integrate the Baldrige model is through Baldrige assessments, which means completely and accurately answering the Baldrige criteria questions and evaluating those responses to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. If you plan to conduct this assessment internally, you will need to train the people who will conduct the assessment in how to interpret the criteria, where to find the answers to the questions, and how…
19Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedCulture’s Impact on the Bottom Line
In his book, The Culture Cycle, James L. Heskett wrote that effective culture can account for 20-30% of the differential in performance when compared to “culturally unremarkable” competitors.
Culture has a significant impact on the bottom line.
Burson-Marsteller and the Great Place to Work Institute asked senior executives from 20 of the top 25 “best multinational companies” for 2011 about the value of a positive work environment. Deidre Campbell highlighted the findings in this article on the HBR Blog Network:
- They invest more in their employees: 30% are investing more in work-life programs such as flex-time and health benefit while the other 70% are holding steady. None is cutting back.
- They provide stability: 75% of respondents valued most those programs that communicate brand mission and provide career development opportunities, compared to 15% who valued traditional benefits like health insurance and family leave and 5% who valued onsite benefits such as cafeterias and childcare.
- They value culture: “When asked which elements of workplace commitment most benefit daily operations, companies ranked culture at 80% and recruitment/retention at 70%,” writes Campbell. Competitiveness, customer loyalty, innovation, and productivity each garnered less than 20%.
- They share their story: 70% of respondents said customers are the most important external audience for understanding the company’s commitment to…
Baldrige Program Update
Our misguided Congress decided not to fund the Baldrige program in 2012. However, the Baldrige program will continue through the support of the Baldrige Foundation, a 501(c)3 organization that has pledged up to $5.2 million for the 2012 cycle. While that does not match the federal funding that was lost, it will keep the program going.
According to an email from Debbie Collard, chair of the Foundation, it “is committed to provide funding for FY2013 and beyond, commensurate with a budget-neutral private sector-funded business and financial model which is under development by a team of members from the Baldrige Enterprise.”
To reassure those organizations and leaders who are considering Baldrige or taking the first steps toward integrating it, the Baldrige program is not likely to end because it lost federal funding. The Foundation will provide essential support during the transition that must occur for the program to survive and thrive. In a Blogrige post, Baldrige program director Harry Hertz outlined the steps being taken to ensure the program’s sustainability:
12Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued“We are actively working with our Enterprise partners (the Baldrige Foundation, the Alliance for Performance Excellence, and ASQ) to develop an Enterprise business and financial model that looks at Baldrige processes on an enterprise-wide…
Publisher Wins Baldrige Award
I grew up in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: baptized and confirmed, eight years in parochial school, Sunday School and church every Sunday, graduated from Concordia College in St. Paul and taught for four years in a Missouri Synod elementary school. Concordia is a popular Missouri Synod name: The Concordia University System includes ten colleges and universities, many of the synod’s churches use the Concordia name, and the publishing arm of the synod is the Concordia Publishing House (CPH), which is the only non-healthcare recipient of the 2011 Baldrige Award.
It’s a well-deserved honor. CPH has 247 employees and revenues of $35 million and provides more than 8,000 products to members of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It excels at customer service, starting with 98% customer satisfaction scores, exceeding the benchmark for U.S. call centers. It’s Customer Call Center has been considered a “Center of Excellence” by Purdue University each of the last three years.
Innovation helps CPH build customer relationships. Its Center for Client Retention collects and analyzes data from customers of competitors, categorizing sales and customer trends in more than 50 different ways to correlate product sales and types of customers. Its Emerging Products team studies how to use new technologies to…
8Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
