All Posts Tagged With: "Baldrige model"
Support Your Baldrige-Based State Award Program
Thirty-three states have quality award programs based on the Baldrige model. You can find out if your state is one of them at the Alliance for Performance Excellence (click here).
The state programs provide excellent local support for organizations that are integrating the Baldrige model. Like the national program, organizations submit applications based on the Baldrige Criteria that are evaluated by trained examiners. Unlike the national program, state programs typically offer levels of awards that range from recognition for starting the journey to a gold-level award similar to the Baldrige Award. State programs often provide training and support to help organizations at all stages of the journey.
Many Baldrige Award winners started with their state programs, identifying and addressing opportunities for improvement until they received their states’ highest awards, at which point they applied for the Baldrige Award. In that way, state programs are like a baseball farm system, providing more personal and hands-on instruction and guidance to prepare organizations for the national stage.
Despite the valuable service they provide, state award programs struggle to stay in business: It wasn’t that long ago that 42 states offered Baldrige-related programs. The marketing difficulties of the national program extend to the state programs, each of which must fend for itself within the business and economic climate of the area it serves.
One example of a thriving state program is the Quality Texas Foundation (QTF), which recently announced an agreement with the…
25Apr2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedIs Baldrige Right for Your Organization?
Harry Hertz is director of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. In a recent post, available here, he used three questions you—or your senior leaders—can use to decide if a Baldrige journey is right for your organization:
- Is your organization doing as well as it could?
- How do you know?
- What and how should your organization improve or change?
Those are three great questions. I can’t think of any organization that’s doing as well as it could. Even Baldrige Award winners only score around 700 out of a possible 1000 points. There’s always room for improvement. The difference between Baldrige winners and most other organizations is that the winners really know how well they are doing and what and how they should improve and change. They know that because they integrated the Baldrige model, and they integrated Baldrige by answering the questions in the Baldrige Criteria and closing the gaps that those answers revealed.
As Hertz concludes, the Criteria “make sure you are truly considering everything that is important in a systematic and systemic way.”
If you’re curious about what that means, read the Criteria for businesses and nonprofits, healthcare, or education.
If you want to know what it looks like to answer Hertz’s three questions well, read the award application summaries of Baldrige Award winners, which are available here.
If you would like more information about the Baldrige program, click here.
To learn more about integrating the Baldrige model, click on these articles:
20Apr2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige: As American as Fast Food
In 2002, Rudy’s “Country Store” & Bar-B-Q increased the sales of its breakfast taco by 91% by following K&N Management’s Product Offering Identification Process shown on the left.
A 2010 Baldrige Award winner, K&N operates Rudy’s and Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries and Shakes in the Austin, Texas, area. The company has 450 employees and annual revenues of $50 million.
The Mighty Fine concept itself came out of this identification process. K&N’s owners needed a new concept to grow the company. According to the company’s award application summary, available here, “After conducting industry research, senior leaders identified the burger market to attract new guests and grow the organization for the following reasons:
- The core competencies of K&N could easily be transferred to a premium hamburger concept.
- Industry trends indicated a premium hamburger concept would meet shifts in guest preferences.
- We wanted to be one of the first fast-casual operations in Austin to feature a premium hamburger.”
They developed a strategy to design, build, and open the new concept, using the same process that boosted sales of the breakfast taco. A test kitchen allowed them to develop a menu, test products, and refine recipes with input from employees, suppliers, and guests. As a result, Might Fine has better sustainable food sales per square foot than nearly all existing hamburger restaurants.
K&N Management differentiates its restaurants from those of its competitors by designing and implementing systematic processes throughout the company. Sales at its restaurants significantly…
14Apr2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedNo Excuses for Avoiding Baldrige
One of the most common objections to integrating the Baldrige model comes from organizations, divisions, or departments that claim that what they do cannot be standardized. Their services are customized for every client. Marketing is too creative. Sales must move too fast. Etc. Etc.
They are excuses for avoiding accountability and continuous improvement. I know this because Freese and Nichols, Inc., (FNI), a 2010 Baldrige Award winner, proves them wrong.
FNI is a small business that provides engineering, architecture, environmental science, planning, and construction services. It grew revenue by 12 to 16% every year for the past four years. Each of its projects is unique, yet it has developed systematic approaches for meeting its customers’ requirements.
The PM Steering Committee is responsible for the project management process, which includes managing work assignments, schedules, and budgets for each projects. Each Technical Excellence Program (TEP) team is responsible for procedures related to technical discipline, which are the tasks executed by individual engineers to create project deliverables.
All client projects are executed through FNI’s project management processes. FNI’s application summary includes a table on page 32 that shows how the company manages project delivery to meet key requirements.
TEP teams create tools, checklists, and references to reduce project time and improve project quality. “Because each project is different, the engineering procedures are designed and documented as discrete tasks to be assembled as needed,” the application summary states. Each TEP team has its own intranet site…
6Apr2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedGet The Baldrige Edge
My focus for the past twenty years has been on understanding how the Baldrige model gives those who use it a competitive edge, not just at the organizational level but at the personal level… Because there’s something different about these strategic performers that gives them an advantage over the short-term plodders around them.
I’ve written four books on the Baldrige model and worked with five Baldrige Award winners and with Baldrige experts in dozens of organizations. I’ve studied how they think and act and have discovered the secrets that transform them from plodders to strategic performers.
Right here, right now, you can secure your job…make it better…and advance your career with The Baldrige Edge.
Whether you are an employee, manager, or leader, there are two ways to look at achieving your goals at work. You can either think like a short-term plodder and believe that your organization will recognize your talents and hard work and reward you…eventually…maybe… OR you can start acting like a strategic performer, knowing that you will get ahead by taking charge of your job and your career. As a strategic performer, you ask the right questions. You provide insightful answers. You stop wasting your days on the same old drudgery, reacting to the latest problems or the newest crisis, and you see the big picture. You understand where you can make the greatest difference and you seize that opportunity and your job becomes richer, more…
12Jan2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige in Asia Pacific
A recent article in VietNam News stated that 11 Vietnamese enterprises received 2010 gold awards for the quality of their management systems. The awards are based on the Baldrige model. In addition, 85 companies received silver awards. The number of awards suggests that Vietnamese businesses are embracing the Baldrige model as a means to achieve performance excellence (“Ministry honours nation’s 96 leading enterprises,” VietNam News, December 27, 2010)
Earlier this year, the Asia Pacific Quality Organization gave world-class IAPQA Awards to one large manufacturing company and two large service companies in Mumbai, India, and to a university in Selangor, Malaysia. It also gave Best in Class Awards to organizations in Vietnam, India, China, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Mexico. You can read the list of winners here.
In addition to Vietnam, several Asia Pacific countries have established quality award programs based, completely or in part, on the Baldrige program. For example, the Singapore Quality Award was launched in 1994. You can see the influence of the Baldrige model on the Singapore criteria, which are available here (pdf). The Australian Business Excellence Award program is managed by SAI Global, an international consulting firm.
In China, Hisense Electric became the first company to with the China Quality Award twice. A well-known home appliance company in China, Hisense expanded into LCD, LED, and plasma televisions, first in China and then internationally, now selling through Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Commenting on the Award, Hisense’s president, Yu…
28Dec2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedQuestions–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…
