All Posts Tagged With: "Baldrige model"
Plan Now to Integrate Baldrige
As a new year approaches, many organizations are finalizing plans to begin or continue their Baldrige journeys. Most will not apply for an award, but rather begin using the Baldrige criteria to evaluate and improve performance. I’m often asked by those new to Baldrige about the best way to integrate Baldrige and what resources are required to make it effective.
From my experience, the introduction to Baldrige often begins with training. Senior leaders need to understand what Baldrige is and how it can help their organizations. They need to know what is involved in a Baldrige assessment so that they can allocate resources, set goals and expectations, and provide ongoing support. And they need to establish processes for reviewing the results of the assessment, prioritizing opportunities for improvement, and developing action plans.
The only way to effectively integrate the Baldrige model is through Baldrige assessments, which means completely and accurately answering the Baldrige criteria questions and evaluating those responses to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. If you plan to conduct this assessment internally, you will need to train the people who will conduct the assessment in how to interpret the criteria, where to find the answers to the questions, and how…
19Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedHuge Health System Wins 2011 Baldrige Award
Kudos to the leaders at Henry Ford Health System, one of four Baldrige Award winners in 2011. It is very challenging for an organization to make the necessary systemic changes to produce repeatable world-class results. It is especially challenging when that organization has 140 sites: seven hospitals, 33 multispecialty ambulatory care centers, affiliated physician practices, a research and education component, the Health Alliance Plan (health insurance coverage for more than 467,000 members), and 91 community care operations.
Henry Ford Health System serves a three-county region encompassing Detroit and its suburbs with a workforce just shy of 30,000 employees, physicians, and volunteers. Its revenue in 2010 was $4.08 billion.
It’s hard to imagine the effort it has taken to keep this massive organization moving along the Baldrige path, but its results are a testament to its leaders’ tenacity:
- Rated #1 for member satisfaction among all health insurance plans in Michigan by J.D. Powers and Associates
- Satisfaction exceeding 90th percentile level for HFHS’s medical centers, with 80% likely to recommend
- Performance on CMS core measures at the 90th percentile for 75% of reporting areas across the system’s seven inpatient hospitals
- Evidence-based global harm campaign to improve patient safety recognized as a national best practice by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
- Market…
Reach Your Goals with Baldrige.com
This is the 600th article to be posted on Baldrige.com, providing “the information you need to build the organization you want” since July 2009. Whether you’re a new visitor to the site—and there have been 9,000 visitors in the past month—or you’ve been here before, this is how Baldrige.com can help you:
- Get the results you want: It will help your organization achieve performance excellence whether you are in healthcare, manufacturing, service, education, nonprofit, or government.
- Learn about all aspects of the Baldrige model. Just click on one of the tabs at the top of this page to learn more about these key areas.
- Find out how to integrate Baldrige. Any type or size of organization can achieve world-class results by integrating the Baldrige model. We explain how to do it.
- Identify your top opportunities for improvement. A Baldrige assessment gives you a detailed snapshot of your entire management system, exposing your opportunities for improvement. We describe how to conduct an assessment and provide consulting support, if needed.
- Close the gaps. Baldrige.com has hundreds of articles about specific areas of concern. For example, you will find more than 75 articles about leadership alone, not to mention the free report on Baldrige Award-Winning Leadership now available (sign up on the right of…
Bottom-Up Baldrige
One of the most common questions I get from managers and employees who believe Baldrige is exactly what their organizations need is: How do I get senior leaders to see the value of this?
Paige Lillard has an answer that worked.
I came across an interview on the Baldrige program’s Web site, link here, with Lillard, VP of business excellence at Turner Broadcasting System. Turner Broadcasting employs more than 9,000 people at such networks as CNN, TBS, and TNT.
Lillard has a small consulting team within Turner Broadcasting that is responsible for helping units within the organization achieve their goals. She does this through the Baldrige model.
Lillard was in the audio department in the early 1990s, an extrovert spending her days alone in an audio studio, and she wasn’t happy. She started learning about total quality management and was intrigued by the concept of leveraging employee engagement and involving them in creating and improving processes. She talked to her manager and asked to discuss it with their VP. She asked him what kept him up at night and he said he wanted to get more out of the staff. Lillard outlined her ideas and he supported them and they started building a performance…
29Sep2011 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedTata: World-Class Baldrige Role Model
If your organization wants to achieve and sustain excellent performance, you need a proven, systematic approach. For the Tata companies, India’s largest business conglomerate, that approach is the Tata Business Excellence Model (TBEM), which is adapted from the Baldrige model.
It’s an approach Honeywell took in the mid-1990s with measurable results. As the average scores of its internal Baldrige assessments improved, so did its operating profit.
Tata companies has also internalized the Baldrige process, which is managed by Tata Quality Management Services (TQMS). The description of the Tata process from its Web site sounds exactly like the Baldrige application process:
15Aug2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThrough TBEM, TQMS helps Tata companies gain insights on their strengths and their opportunities for improvement. This is managed through an annual process of applications and assessments. Each company writes an application wherein it describes, in the context of the TBEM matrix, what it does and how it does it. This submission is then gauged by trained assessors who study the application, visit the company and interact with its people. The assessors map out the strengths and improvement opportunities existing in the company before providing their feedback to its leadership team.
TQMS trains and certifies assessors, who are selected from across the group, and…
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:
- Manufacturing has been the path to development. “From the rise of England in the 19th century, to the rise of the U.S., Germany, Japan and the USSR in the 20th, to the newly industrializing countries like Korea, Taiwan, and now China, manufacturing has been the key to prosperity.”
- Manufacturing is the foundation of global “Great Power.” “About 80% of the world’s production of factory…
Baldrige Model: How do you obtain information from your customers?
The Baldrige Model: How do you obtain information from your customers?
Item 3.1 in the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions about how your organization listens to your customers. The following processes, best practices, and problem areas look at critical issues in this part of the Baldrige model.
Your organization needs processes for:
Listening to each key customer group and market segment across the entire customer life cycle, to former and potential customers, and to customers of competitors to obtain actionable information
Following up with customers on product/service quality, customer support, and transactions to acquire immediate and actionable feedback
Determining customer satisfaction, engagement, and dissatisfaction
Using data and information about customer satisfaction, engagement, and dissatisfaction to exceed their expectations and improve loyalty
Obtaining information about your customers’ satisfaction with your organization, products, services, and support relative to their satisfaction with your competitors and other organizations providing similar products and services
Best practices to consider:
Using established processes, the organization knows exactly what each of its customer groups and/or market segments requires and communicates that knowledge throughout the organization.
Listening posts are established for all customer groups and segments with processes for collecting, analyzing, and sharing the information from those posts.
Follow-up with customers typically includes relationship and transaction surveys and frequently involves…
16May2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
