All Posts Tagged With: "Baldrige process"
Bringing Your Priorities to Life
According to Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell Soup, “a leader’s job is to take people from where they are today to where they need to be tomorrow and to do so as quickly as possible and in a way that is sustainable.” Conant’s results at Campbell Soup suggest that his leadership approach is effective: The company was the worst performer of all major global food companies when he arrived as CEO in 2001. In 2009 it outperformed the S&P Food Group and the S&P 500.
Along with Mette Norgaard, Conant has written a book about his leadership philosophy called Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments. IndustryWeek reviews the book here.
In his book, Conant describes how he turned around Nabisco Food Company, his gig before going to Campbell Soup, “with a philosophy of being tough-minded on the standards and tender-hearted with people.” “Some joked that my approach was a cross between Pollyanna and Don Quixote,” he said, “but I have no apologies. The people were highly engaged and delivering excellent results. We grew earnings at a double-digit rate for five straight years. If that’s a sign of weakness, I’ll take it every time.”
He used the same approach—successfully—at Campbell…
13Oct2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedOne Step to Better Results
Consider the list of concerns that most senior leaders have:
- I must meet the goals that I and others have set for our organization.
- I need to know what is or might keep us from reaching those goals.
- I need to think long-term but I also need results now.
- I need to get everyone on the same page.
- I need to make good decisions about allocating resources, both human and financial.
- I want to minimize surprises and firefighting and make our continued success predictable.
- I want to keep my job—or get a better one.
The list can be overwhelming if a senior leader has to focus on each concern individually, but it is manageable if all concerns are addressed by a systematic approach to leadership.
The Baldrige model provides a proven, systems approach.
A leader sees his or her organization through the filter of his/her area of expertise. The CFO views the organization differently than the COO. While the CEO has broader responsibilities, he or she arrived at that position with a filter, having been a CFO or COO or leader of another function before taking the top post. This inhibits a systems perspective of how the organization does what it does, and without that systems perspective, it is very…
9Oct2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBaldrige and Lean in Healthcare
For the last few years, nearly half of the Baldrige Award’s customers have come from healthcare, which is not surprising: Healthcare costs continue to rise without a related improvement in healthcare results.
Hospitals and medical centers embrace the Baldrige model for the systems perspective it provides. Senior leaders who have integrated Baldrige attest to the new knowledge it gives them about how their organizations operate, which means they gain greater control over the levers of success. In healthcare, where so many factors conspire to increase costs and decrease performance, understanding and controlling those factors is priceless.
One example is described here. Advocate Condell Medical Center, a 350-bed Level 1 trauma center in north Chicago, turned to Baldrige and Lean to tackle serious challenges at the hospital and its imaging business including:
- Ranking in the bottom quartile of patient satisfaction
- High percentage of denials and bad debt
- Negative growth
- 30% of calls abandoned or lost
- Report turnaround time of 16 hours
- A 6% no-show rate
- Cumbersome registration process
- Long patient wait times
- Low staff and physician morale
Baldrige provided the management framework for aligning and integrating strategies, plans, and activities. Lean improved process flow and eliminated waste by involving staff in identifying and eliminating wasteful steps and streamlining processes.
One year after launching the…
22Aug2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedA Pathway to Innovation
I worked with MEDRAD on both of its Baldrige Awards. Rose Almon-Martin, vice president of Performance Excellence and Brand, managed those Baldrige application processes. Over the last eight years, she has become a Baldrige examiner and become involved in establishing Pennsylvania’s state award program.
Rose is quoted in “The Baldrige Process: World Standard in Manufacturing Quality Improvement – But Still Relevant?” She compares the resources spent on Baldrige to doing maintenance on a physical plant. “It’s not extra. It’s part of how we do things. What Baldrige does is keep you constantly improving the intangible assets. Since we started using the criteria back in the early ‘90s, we have doubled our revenue per employee.”
The article quotes Andy Tannen, a reputation management expert who wrote in IndustryWeek that “the business press, not to mention the mainstream media, pays little attention to what amounts to the Oscars for business.”
For too many leaders, Baldrige is synonymous with the mundane side of running an organization: process management, measurement, and employee satisfaction. Eric Franks, manager of Technology and Quality Assurance at PRO-TEC, another Baldrige Award winner, explains that the real value of Baldrige is in creating an innovative culture.
“Baldrige helps us drive innovation and incorporate new processes so…
1Jun2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedValue of the Baldrige Program
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recently released a preliminary report with recommendations on how to cut costs in the federal government. One of its recommendations included the elimination of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.
The commission’s recommendations have been widely panned, in part because, while they would save $228 billion, they would lose four million jobs. They would reduce Pentagon spending, cut tax deductions for mortgage payments, raise the retirement age to 69, cut retirement benefits by up to 35%, cut Medicare, and generally antagonize every special interest in Washington. It’s hard to believe any politician will support it.
Still, raising the specter of eliminating the Baldrige program has prompted Baldrige supporters to rally support for the program. Paul Borawski, chief executive officer of ASQ, wrote an open letter to the commissioners in which he argued, “There is no other program like this in the world and in fact, other countries utilize the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program as a model.” You can read his letter here.
The Baldrige Improvement Discussion Group on LinkedIn has an ongoing debate about what key messages should be communicated to the commission in support of the Baldrige program. My friend and Baldrige.com contributor Paul Grizzell…
30Nov2010 | 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…
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…
11Nov2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
