Criteria
What Changed? Examining This Year’s Baldrige Criteria
Intelligent Risks – Opportunities for which the potential gain outweighs the potential harm or loss to your organization’s sustainability if you do not explore them. Taking intelligent risks requires a tolerance for failure and an expectation that innovation is not achieved by initiating only successful endeavors.
Strategic Opportunities – Prospects that arise from outside-the-box thinking, brainstorming, capitalizing on serendipity, research and innovation processes, nonlinear extrapolation of current conditions, and other approaches to imagining a different future. Choosing which strategic opportunities to pursue involves consideration of relative risk, financial and otherwise, and then making intelligent choices (intelligent risks).
This year, NIST added the two terms above to their glossary. These two new terms summarize the changes made to the criteria in a more succinct way than I ever could, but I’ll lay out the differences further below. The purpose of revising the Criteria is “that the Criteria always reflect the leading edge of validated management practice,” inevitably leading to sustainability and success when orchestrated with an organization management program. Some of the more significant changes and their rationale are outlined below
1. The information and decision process for work systems has been incorporated into the strategic planning category.
- Why? Decisions about what should be made or supplied outside the company, core competencies, and how to engage customers are made by senior leaders, and need to be integrated into the strategic planning
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Loyola, Baldrige, and Six Sigma: An MBA Program Designed with Today’s Business in Mind
Loyola University has just announced that their Fall 2013 MBA curriculum will not only follow the Baldrige criteria framework, but also incorporates Six Sigma training and certification. Through partnership with the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Loyola students will have the opportunity to work on real performance improvement projects and project management certifications.
“Six Sigma is a quality improvement methodology that is used by most of the top companies in the country for controlling variation and reducing costs. It’s a highly prized, internationally recognized standard,” said Jerry Goolsby, Ph.D., M.B.A., director of graduate programs for the College of Business.
According to a press release from the University, recent Loyola MBA grads have gone on to work in advanced professional positions at companies like General Electric, General Motors, Symetra, and Shell.
Loyola has been incorporating the Baldrige criteria into their curriculum for the past few years, but have been fine-tuning the coursework along the way. To expose students to the realities of the corporate world, the school offers an Executive Mentor Program for MBA students, which matches a small group of students to a successful area business executive. Shadowing business trips, discussing time management, personal finance, goal setting, and communication skills, as well as networking with the local business community are just some of the benefits students can absorb from this program.
In addition to the expansion of …
6Feb2013 | Joseph A. De Feo | 1 comment | ContinuedWelcome to 2013. What Will You Do This Year?
It’s a new year; time to plan, set goals, and determine where your business is going and how it will excel. Where will you go? What will you do? What will you focus on? Will your company branch out in new directions? How will you keep your customers happy? And what about your employees; where do they fall on the totem pole of prioritization? If your strategy is busting at the seams but lacking clear direction, perhaps it’s time to take a look at the Baldrige criteria.
“When you look at the Baldrige Criteria, what a great road map to say if you can do the things in all these categories and do them well, you’re going to be a well-run company.” – Robert F. Pence, President & CEO Freese and Nichols, Inc., 2010 Baldrige Award recipient
The Baldrige criteria for performance excellence are aimed at increasing the competitiveness of U.S. businesses. Some of the core values that are interspersed throughout the criteria include customer-driven excellence, a focus on the future, operational effectiveness, and managing for innovation. These values are tested throughout the seven criteria items: Leadership; Strategic Planning; Customer Focus; Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management; Workforce Focus; Operations Focus; Results. If you’re new to Baldrige, the Strategic Planning section is a great place to start.
So, your strategic plan is overflowing with initiatives in every which way, and the …
11Jan2013 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | Continued2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence Now Available!
NIST has released the 2013-2014 Criteria for Performance Excellence! Click here for pricing and download information.
19Dec2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | ContinuedIs your organization doing as well as it could? How do you know?
What and how should your organization improve or change?The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence empower your organization—no matter its size, and whether it is in the manufacturing, service, small business, nonprofit or government sector—to
- reach your goals,
- improve your results, and
- become more competitive by aligning your plans, processes, decisions, people, actions, and results.
Source: NIST
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Systematic Innovation
This article is the third and final in an on-going series about innovation, by Juran Institute President and CEO, Joseph A. DeFeo.
Innovators are not always born with exorbitant talent. If you have your heart set on being the next Thomas Edison, you are probably going a bit too far. Whatever your innovation quotient is now, you can make it better with practice and by using a methodology that causes innovation to happen.
For instance, how many times do we hear, “Think outside the box”? That’s all well and good, but what box? Few of us recognize that the box is in fact ourselves. Learning to temporarily let go, be foolish for a moment, and be comfortable with ambiguity is necessary for innovation. Getting beyond our “boxed” selves is a skill that can be learned and improved with technique, practice, and courage. For example, imaging oneself as someone else and seeing everything through his or her eyes can be a great technique.
Arriving at this level of letting go will require a systematic methodology. Many methods have been used in developing simpler and better products. These design processes incorporate early involvement teams. The teams are composed of a broad spectrum of employees, customers, and suppliers who work together through a systematic process of looking and thinking outside the box to solve problems. The results are significant, and new products can …
2May2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | ContinuedDesigning for Innovation
In section 4.1 of the Baldrige Criteria, Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management, there is a question under Performance Improvement that asks, “How do you use organizational performance review findings to develop priorities for continuous improvement and opportunities for innovation?” Well, how do you?
Designing for customer needs frequently leads to higher-quality goods and services as well as innovative outcomes because an effective design process uncovers hidden customer needs. This discovery, and the subsequent solving of the problems that kept customer needs hidden, will lead to innovation. Designing innovative and superior quality services and products requires gaining a clear understanding of the customers’ needs and translating those needs into products and services aimed at meeting them. This information can be the driver of innovation; however, most do not recognize it as such.
Innovation has everything to do with creating something new. In competitive business situations success often comes to the best innovators. Many organizations have design and development functions that create annual plans to develop new models and new services. Sometimes these functions design the good or service internally to the organization and then look for customers to sell it to, while other innovation comes from solving societal problems. Additionally, organizations may look for customer problems to solve; as a result they create something new, something innovative. It is the latter that we have found to be the …
27Apr2012 | Joseph A. De Feo | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige FAQs: The Baldrige Criteria
What are the Baldrige Criteria?
The Baldrige Criteria define a management model focused on performance excellence. By answering more than 250 Criteria questions, organizations get a comprehensive snapshot of their management systems that they can use to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. There are three versions of the Baldrige Criteria, one for businesses and nonprofits, one for healthcare, and one for education. You can view the 2011-2012 Criteria online here.
Who develops the Criteria?
The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is responsible for the Baldrige Criteria, which are revised and published every two years. The Baldrige Program solicits input from Award applicants, members of the Board of Examiners, and others to update the Criteria.
What do the Criteria address?
The Baldrige Criteria are organized into an Organizational Profile and seven categories: Leadership; Strategic Planning; Customer Focus; Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management; Workforce Focus; Operations Focus; and Results. Each category is divided into Items, and each Item is further divided into Areas to Address that pose the questions to be answered.
For example, the Leadership category has two Items: Senior Leadership and Governance and Social Responsibility. The Senior Leadership Item has two Areas to Address: Vision, Values, and Mission and Communication and Organizational Performance. Each Area groups questions by subject. For example, the Vision, Mission, and Values area groups questions into three subjects: Vision and Values, Promoting Legal and Ethical …
30Dec2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
