Quality Award Programs
New 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 for the Baldrige Award. Fewer applicants should help cut costs for the Baldrige program, which is necessary in 2012 and beyond because a shortsighted Congress ended federal funding for the program. As Hertz noted in his blog post, “the decision by Congress to eliminate our federal funding is causing the…
21Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige 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 scale, looking for revenue sources and efficiencies that can be gained. At the same time our internal Enterprise Transition Team, composed of five Baldrige staff members, is working on our own business model, as part of the transition to an Enterprise focus…We have benchmarked other award programs, various associations, and…
2011 Baldrige Award Winners
Four organizations, three in healthcare and one nonprofit, have won the 2011 Baldrige Award:
- The Henry Ford Health System, a nonprofit organization based in Detroit, has more than 24,000 employees and operates 30 general medical centers and seven specialized medical facilities.
- Schneck Medical Center in Seymour, Indiana, is a nonprofit institution with 114 beds and a staff of more than 800 employees.
- Southcentral Foundation is an Alaska Native-owned, nonprofit healthcare organization serving nearly 60,000 Alaska Native and American Indian people in and around Anchorage.
- Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis is the publisher for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, offering more than 8,000 products to families, individuals, Christian schools, and congregations.
Gary Meyer, president and CEO of Schneck Medical Center, noted that his organization first implemented the Baldrige framework four years ago. “The Baldrige criteria and our unwavering commitment to quality, satisfaction, and continuous improvement have helped us toward our vision to be an organization of excellence, every person, every time,” he said.
In 2011, 69 organizations applied for the Baldrige Award, of which 11 reached the final, site visit review stage. Six of the 11 were healthcare organizations. Baldrige examiners visited these site visit finalists for several days in October to clarify and verify the content of their application. For example, during four days at Henry Ford, examiners spent time at three dozen medical sites and interviewed executives and more than 1,200 employees. The Baldrige Panel of Judges used feedback from the site visits and the examiners’ evaluation of the applications to recommend award recipients.
To learn more about the…
22Nov2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Real Value of a Baldrige Site Visit
Of the 69 applicants for the 2011 Baldrige Award, 11 have made it to the final stage. They will receive site visits in October by a team of examiners who will verify and clarify their applications.
The finalists for the Award are:
- 6 healthcare organizations (40 submitted applications)
- 3 nonprofits/government organizations (14)
- 1 educational organization (8)
- 1 small business (2)
Two manufacturers and three service companies also submitted applications but none was awarded a site visit.
According to the press release from the Baldrige program, “examiners will provide 300 to 1,000 hours of review to each applicant receiving a site visit, and all applicants will receive a detailed report on the organization’s strengths and opportunities for improvement.”
Organizations that take integrating Baldrige seriously recognize that the site visit and resulting feedback are the real value of the Baldrige process. Sure, winning the Baldrige Award is satisfying and rewarding, a testament to the hard work you’ve been doing, but visionary leaders see the Award as recognition for the quality of their management systems while the site visit and feedback drive significant improvements to those systems. They are passionate about improving performance and a Baldrige site visit and feedback report feed that passion.
This has been true since the earliest days of Baldrige. In my book, The Baldrige Quality System, Bill Lesner, a Cadillac plant manager, described the site visit it received in 1990, the year Cadillac won the Baldrige Award:
16Sep2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued“Part of the problem in the day-to-day operation of business is that you see and respond to problems. You ask yourself, ‘Are…
America Needs Baldrige
We want to raise awareness among our elected representatives in Washington about the value of the Baldrige program. On Thursday, September 8th, Baldrige supporters are being asked to email, fax, and/or call their Senators and Congressmen/ Congresswomen to tell them that “America Needs Baldrige.”
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve posted articles about the results achieved by Baldrige organizations. They provide compelling evidence of the value of the program:
- A study by the European Foundation for Quality Management of 120 Award-winning companies, including 24 from the U.S., compared their financial performance to that of similar companies that had not won awards. Five years after receiving their awards, these companies outperformed the comparison companies by 77% in sales, 44% in assets, and 18% in operating income.
- Cargill has an internal Baldrige assessment process. The cumulative earnings after tax vs. budget of business units that have a high degree of deployment of the Baldrige model is 30% compared to 13% for those with partial deployment and -12% for those just starting the Baldrige journey.
- The five two-time Baldrige Award winners grew significantly between their first and second Awards: 67% in number of sites; 63% in jobs; and 93% in revenue
This Thursday, please take a few minutes to tell your federal representatives why America Needs Baldrige:
Step 1: Prepare to participate in America Needs Baldrige by looking up contact information for your Senators and Congressman/Congresswoman:
- Go to www.congress.org
- Enter your home zip code; some sites may also have you enter your street address
- Click on each elected official to get detailed…
“Brown-ing” Baldrige
I’m a big fan of author and Baldrige expert Mark Brown. The LinkedIn Baldrige Improvement Discussion Group recently launched a discussion about how to improve the Baldrige Criteria and, while many contributed, I was struck by Brown’s insights and ideas. Here are a few—and make sure you read all the way to the end:
- Eliminate 75% of the words. “Review the Criteria from the 1990s and the current Singapore criteria or the abbreviated criteria used by New Zealand or California to see a closer approximation of what the Criteria need to become.”
- Lose Results Item 7.4. “No one understands this, most don’t have any data to include, and, when combined with 1.2, leadership and governance are worth 50 points more than financial and market results, which is completely ridiculous,” Brown wrote.
- Overhaul Category 2. Change the terminology (i.e., goals instead of objectives), make Item 2.1 about your planning process and Item 2.2 about what your plans are. “Regarding points, the process for doing planning is far less important than the plan itself.”
- Lose the questions that ask how you design work processes and systems. Having tried to respond to these questions dozens of times, I completely agree. “No one sat down with a blank sheet of paper when creating a hospital, restaurant, or airline.” Answering questions about how you design a work system or process is one of the biggest challenges in a Baldrige application.
- Remove questions about emergency preparedness, which “is another over-inflated Item that should not be called out,” and knowledge management, which “is also a…
How Can We Promote Baldrige?
The Baldrige program announced that 69 organizations have applied for the 2011 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The number is down from last year, primarily because of a significant drop in healthcare applicants (54 in 2010, 40 in 2011). The number of education applicants doubled from 7 to 14 while the number of small business applicants dropped from 7 to 2. A total of five businesses larger than 500 employees applied for the Award in both years; only seven businesses, large and small, applied for the 2011 Award.
As the chart shows, the dearth of business applicants is a long-term trend. The Baldrige program can survive by appealing to healthcare and government agencies, both of which are under pressure to get their acts together, but its roots are in business. For the first 13 years of the Baldrige program, only businesses could apply for and win the Award. It wasn’t until 2001 that three educational institutions won it and the first healthcare winner received the Award in 2002.
While a few businesses, especially at the state level, show interest in the Baldrige model, it is almost invisible on the national business stage.
How do we change that? How can we make Baldrige relevant to the business community? How do we get it to show up on the radars of senior leaders?
What do you think?
15Jun2011 | Steve George | 4 comments | Continued
