Education Needs Baldrige

Based on results, the most effective way to ensure that no child is left behind would be to mandate integrating the Baldrige model at every public school system. Increase school funding to support the initiative, say one full-time person for every 10,000 students in a district, and you would get exponentially better achievement, satisfaction, and cost control. As an example, for my city’s school district, spending $50,000 on a Baldrige leader, out of a total budget of more than $30 million, would offer a huge return on investment.

Two Baldrige Award-winning districts prove my point. Jenks Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, received the Baldrige Award in 2005. It has continued to use the Baldrige model to pursue excellence. According to the Jenks Gazette, “the 2011 graduates of Jenks High School had an average composite (ACT) score of 23.9, which is far above both state and national averages of 20.7 and 21.2, respectively. The composite ACT score for graduating students at JHS has increased every year for the past five years,” or since it won the Baldrige Award. Dr. Kirby Lehman, superintendent of Jenks Public Schools, noted that “these scores are even more impressive when considering over 80% of all graduates at Jenks took the exam, compared to the national average of 49%.”

Eight of out ten Jenks students are taking the ACT, compared to the national average of just five out of ten, yet JHS is performing…

How Would You Measure a Society’s Performance?

If you could apply the Baldrige model to a society, how would you measure its performance?

One way would be to identify key indicators of performance excellence. One indicator would be productivity, which many organizations include in their Baldrige applications. The following chart, from an article in Mother Jones, shows that productivity in the U.S. has improved by 80% since 1979. According to NationMaster.com, the U.S. ranks second in overall productivity behind only Luxembourg.

Some of that is due to automation and technology, but it’s also because Americans are working harder. Forty percent of professional men and 23% of middle-income men work more than 50 hours a week. In a healthy society, one would expect that the people responsible for improving productivity—and working longer and harder to do it—would benefit from their efforts. Not in the United States. As the blue line on the chart shows, average overall wages increased about 3% in 30 years. As Mother Jones reports, “If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.”

The red line on the chart shows where some of the value of our productivity increase has gone. More is going for corporate profits, which are up 20% in 20 years. As the blue line on the chart and our high unemployment rate indicate, tax cuts for the rich and tax breaks for businesses do nothing to improve…

6 Reasons to Revive US Manufacturing

The impetus for the Baldrige program in the late 1980s was improving manufacturing in the United States. The original criteria reflected a manufacturing mindset that has evolved to fit all types of organizations, but it wasn’t until the third year of the Baldrige Award that a service company, FedEx, won the Award.

Despite its origin in manufacturing, the Award has little appeal for manufacturers today. Only a few manufacturers apply for the Baldrige Award each year while 54 healthcare organizations submitted applications in 2010. Last year, only three manufacturers, among 83 total applicants, applied for the Award, although some of the seven small business applicants may have been manufacturers.

Reviving Baldrige in manufacturing can help revive manufacturing in the U.S. Why is manufacturing so important? Jon Rynn lists six reasons it is central to the economy in an article in new deal 2.0:

1. Manufacturing has been the path to development. “From the rise of England in the 19^th century, to the rise of the U.S., Germany, Japan and the USSR in the 20^th, to the newly industrializing countries like Korea, Taiwan, and now China, manufacturing has been the key to prosperity.”
2. Manufacturing is the foundation of global “Great Power.” “About 80% of the world’s production of factory machinery has been controlled by what we would consider the ‘Great Powers.’ Until the 1950s, the U.S. had produced about 50%; we now produce less than China’s 16%.”
3. Manufacturing is the most important cause of economic…

Porter: CSR Is Dead End

In an interview on HBR.org, management expert, author, and Harvard professor Michael Porter said that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is a dead end. “For folks in the CSR world,” he added, “the real impact isn’t on charitable giving but mobilizing the business itself.” (video and article available here)

Porter and partner Mark Kramer argue for a principle they label “shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges. Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress.” As they see it, “shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success.”

It’s not exactly a catchy name, nor is it a new concept, but if Porter and Kramer can get more companies to focus on the needs and challenges of society—rather than creating a demand for something we don’t really need—they will help CSR move to the next phase.

I would call that next phase corporate social profitability (CSP), since both companies and society benefit.

If you want to know what CSP looks like, consider the case of Dannon yogurt in Bangladesh, which I wrote about here. Danone teamed up with Grameen Bank to develop a low-cost yogurt that provides 30% of a Bangladeshi child’s recommended daily nutrients. It created economic value by creating value for society.

Or how about Procter & Gamble, which now has nine manufacturing plants that are…