Questions–and Answers–about the Quality of Your Organization

Holidays often provide moments of reflection. Leaders who use the opportunity to reflect on the condition of their organizations may face some difficult questions, such as:

• Why aren’t we performing better?
• What are our biggest opportunities to improve?
• How can we prepare the organization to compete in the future?
• How good are we, really?

You can answer these questions and more with a Baldrige assessment. With an assessment, you ask and answer more than 130 questions about all aspects of your management system, about how you do what you do. The result is a comprehensive snapshot of your organization at a moment in time that reveals the strengths upon which you can build and the opportunities for improvement that can make your organization perform better.

A Baldrige assessment typically takes more than three months. If you do it internally, it usually involves one or two people full-time or a half-dozen or more part-time. If you hire a Baldrige expert to do the assessment, it can cost $50,000 or more. In my experience, both the time and money commitments are smart investments because of the bottom-line benefits of a Baldrige assessment including:

• Getting a clear and complete picture of your management system
• Identifying your organization’s strengths and opportunities for improvement
• Comparing your organization’s performance to world-class standards
• Using the assessment and evaluation to get consensus on priorities and next steps
• Involving leaders and managers in a systematic approach to improving performance
• Focusing the organization on what it must…

Creating a Culture of Excellence with Baldrige

If you’ve ever walked along a Miami beach (or seen one on television), chances are it was maintained by the Miami-Dade County Park and Recreation Department. The department also oversees the third largest county park system in the country, marinas, pools, programs for children, nature centers, arts and culture programs, Zoo Miami, and much more. It won the 2009 Florida Sterling Award for Performance Excellence and shared its journey this week during a webinar sponsored by ActiveStrategy. If you missed the webinar, you can still catch the archived copy by clicking here.

The department started its quest for the Sterling Award, which is based on the Baldrige Award and Criteria, in 2006. It traces the beginning of its quality journey to 2001 when it adopted a strategic planning process that involved stakeholders in developing its first comprehensive plan, which was rolled out in 2004. It worked with ActiveStrategy to build a Balanced Scorecard-based performance framework to align its strategic plan with its performance measurement system.

By the time it applied for the Sterling Award it had received several awards for excellence and considered itself a leader in its industry. The feedback on its application was an eye-opener, revealing gaps in its management system that it used as a blueprint for improvement. One gap was that upper management was using the balanced scorecard but the rest of the organization wasn’t. It addressed this gap by training 180 managers…

Free Webinar: Sign Up Now!

ActiveStrategy is presenting a free webinar by the leaders of the Miami-Dade County Park and Recreation Department, which won the Florida Sterling Award in 2009. You can learn more about the webinar and how to register by clicking on the banner on the right of this page.

Never as Good as You Think

How would you rate your company’s performance? The first time companies conduct a Baldrige assessment, nearly everyone earns fewer than 300 of a possible 1000 points. You’re an industry stalwart? Under 300 points. You’re a profit-making machine? 300 points max. You’re a stock market darling? 300 points at best. Think you’re better than everyone else? 300 points says you’re not. More importantly, it tells you that your management system needs attention.

Don’t believe me? Take the test. Assess your management system using the Baldrige criteria. Submit your assessment for review by trained evaluators. While you’re waiting to find out how you did, start working on those weaknesses revealed while you were putting the assessment together. Because there will be weaknesses.

I’ve helped dozens of organizations conduct Baldrige assessments. Some knew they had problems and wanted to find them. Others thought they were pretty good and wanted affirmation. The first group was never disappointed.

Very few leaders have participated in a thorough evaluation of their management systems. Most wouldn’t know where to start. Fortunately, the Baldrige criteria provide both a framework and a process for such an endeavor.

The framework involves asking questions about how your company works. The questions are grouped into seven categories that cover every aspect of your management system, from how you achieve your strategic objectives to how you determine customer requirements to how you manage key processes to a whole lot more. If you’ve never asked…