Baldrige Process
How Long Does It Take to Win?
Most organizations are attracted to Baldrige because they want to improve their performance, but at some point, almost all of them ask a question that has been on their minds:
How long does it take to win the Baldrige Award?
The Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation started using Baldrige in 1993 through the Tennessee Quality Award program. It was awarded the Tennessee Quality Excellence Award in 1999 and received the Baldrige Award in 2003. According to its Web site, it planned to apply for the Baldrige Award again this year as a worldwide organization.
You could say it took Cat Financial ten years to win the Baldrige Award. I know other organizations–granted, not many–who have done it in two.
So how long does it take to win the Baldrige Award? It depends.
It depends on your starting point. If you’re a 250-point organization (which is pretty common for first-time Baldrige assessments), it’s probably at least five years. If you’re a 500-point company, maybe a couple years if everything goes right.
It depends on senior executive commitment. If your CEO will move mountains to close the gaps in your management system, it will take less time than if senior leaders stand on the sidelines and delegate the improvement process.
It depends on how serious the gaps are. If you don’t have a strategic planning process or a performance measurement system or some other key process, it’s going to take a few…
10Mar2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedOrganizing Your Baldrige Research
Before you can write a Baldrige application, you must gather and organize the information and data you need to respond to the Baldrige Criteria questions. Your research will produce interview notes from internal subject matter experts; documentation of processes, procedures, presentations, meeting minutes, reports, and other material; and data you will use to create the graphs for the Results category. You will want to organize all of this stuff to help you with two tasks: (1) determine if you have all you need to answer every Criteria question; and, (2) respond to the questions by making it easy to find all relevant information.
The Baldrige Criteria disassemble a management system into seven categories and a profile, 20 items, 41 areas to address, and 150 or so questions. One way to organize Baldrige research is to disassemble it along the same lines. This is easier to do with interviews, during which you have likely asked specific questions about specific areas to address, and for data than it is for supporting documentation.
I’ve done research for dozens of Baldrige and state award applications and my approach is to assign pieces of each interview to the appropriate Baldrige areas to address and then to cut and paste them in the order laid out in the Criteria. If parts of an interview apply to more than one area to address, I copy and paste them more…
25Feb2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedAn Ongoing Commitment to Quality
In December of 1980, Roger Milliken assembled 267 of his managers (Milliken and Company has been in his family since 1865) to hear Philip Crosby speak. Crosby, a popular management expert and the author of Quality Is Free, echoed the position of Deming and Juran that “management is the problem,” but the statement that really riled people up was “the cost of quality at your company, if it’s like most, is 18 to 22% of your revenues.”
One senior manager rose and shook his finger at Crosby as he asserted that there was no way his division’s COQ was that high. (Cost of quality is the total cost of ensuring good quality and rectifying poor quality and includes prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs, and external failure costs.)
After the meeting, Milliken formed a task force to determine the company’s actual cost of quality and sure enough, Crosby was wrong. It wasn’t 18 to 22%; it was 26%.
Do you know what your cost of quality is? You can estimate by applying Milliken’s rate to your organization. How much is one-fourth of your annual revenue?
You can find a quick guide to calculating your cost of quality at bexcellence.org. Don’t be thrown off by references to business and manufacturing; you can adapt the categories and examples of costs to any organization.
Milliken was one of the first companies to receive the Baldrige Award in…
23Feb2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedLeading the Integration of Baldrige
One of the ways organizations integrate Baldrige is by putting an executive in charge of each Baldrige category. The executive is responsible for:
- Understanding what the category addresses, which means understanding the category questions in the Baldrige Criteria
- Knowing how the organization performs on those questions, which means understanding your organizations’ strengths and opportunities for improvement (which requires some type of Baldrige assessment)
- Developing strategies and actions to address the opportunities, which often become part of the organization’s strategic plan
- Being accountable for improving performance on the areas addressed by the category, which usually involves reviewing performance with the senior leadership team on a monthly or quarterly basis
In some organizations, the executive/category “owner” leads a category team that shares these responsibilities. This approach is less effective if the team ends up doing all the work and the executive is a figurehead. Effectively integrating Baldrige will transform your organization, bringing significant change that requires senior leadership. It will be less effective—if it occurs at all—if executives delegate that integration.
Most organizations take a logical approach to assigning executives to categories (with equivalent positions in schools and government agencies):
- The CEO takes Leadership
- The head of marketing and/or sales takes Customer Focus
- The CIO or head of IT takes Measurement and Analysis
- The head of HR take Workforce Focus
- The COO takes Process Management
You may have to shuffle the order if one of these folks is responsible for the strategic planning process.…
22Feb2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | Continued5 Baldrige Application Mistakes
Over the past 20 years, I have had the opportunity to work with or review more than 250 Baldrige and state award applications, Shingo Prize applications, and feedback reports. The goal of an application is to receive the most useful feedback report possible while earning all the points your organization is entitled to. In my experience, most beginning organizations, especially those writing an application entirely on their own, make five basic mistakes that keep them from reaching this goal:
- Not using figures, including tables and graphics, effectively in the application
- Not providing key information
- Not providing key results
- Ignoring the scoring guidelines
- Not having someone knowledgeable about the Criteria and the examination process review the application before submission
There are two types of questions in the Criteria: “how” questions asking for the description of a process and “what” questions asking for information. A root cause of mistake #2 often results from not answering a “what” question. One applicant’s feedback report read, “The applicant did not describe the most important goals for its strategic objectives.” The Criteria ask what these goals are.
It is critical to provide the information requested in a space-saving format, which is why bulleted lists and tables are commonly used, thus avoiding mistake #1. Space is limited in the Organizational Profile and Categories 1-7. The use of a single table that covers the responses to multiple questions is very efficient.
Another best practice is the…
19Jan2010 | admin | 2 comments | Continued5 Added Values of the Baldrige Process
This is a guest article by Paul Grizzell. If you want to contribute an article to Baldrige.com, check out the guidelines here.
When visiting with senior leaders about the value of embarking on a Baldrige journey, a frequently used phrase is, “It’s not about the Award.” At that point, the discussion moves to writing an application, and the sense of leaders is: “We’re applying for an Award!” How do we convince leaders that there is value within the Baldrige process above and beyond applying for Baldrige or a state or local quality award?
Leaders need to understand what value the Baldrige process provides if it’s not just about the award, especially considering the investment of time involved in developing a 50-page application.
In my experience, five “added values” of the Baldrige process demonstrate the benefit of developing a Baldrige application—even if you never submit the application to an award process.
1. Accountability Tool. The structure of the Baldrige process forces accountability. When senior leaders take responsibility for a particular Baldrige category, they “own” the linkage among the three components of the application:
- Organizational Profile: What is important to the organization?
- Process categories: Based on what is important, what do we do, and how do we do it?
- Results category: Now that we’ve done it, were we successful?
2. Sustainability Tool. The Baldrige process helps document how business is done at the organization. The departure of a senior leader…
18Jan2010 | Paul Grizzell | 0 comments | ContinuedPay Yourself First
It’s easy to acquire tunnel vision. There are jobs to do, projects to complete, and meetings to attend. Your organization is probably running lean, which means you’re responsible for your job as well as big chunks of work from coworkers who’ve moved or left. It’s hard to find the time to do anything well, much less learn and grow. Like the organization, you are sacrificing long-term considerations for short-term necessities. Focus on what’s in front of you. Get through the day.
Financial planners tell their clients to pay themselves first with every paycheck. Take a small amount from each check and put it in savings. Even when money is tight. Even when you have urgent needs in front of you. Don’t squander your future by being short-sighted. Pay yourself first.
The same concept applies to your work life. Take a few minutes from each day and use it to increase your value. Step back from the tunnel and broaden your understanding of how your entire team, department, and organization work. Identify your customers and what they require and how you can make them more satisfied and loyal. Learn how the processes you are part of function and how you can improve them. Find the data and information you need to evaluate and improve performance. Determine how what you do serves the mission, vision, plans, and goals of the organization and if it…
28Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
