Let me personally thank Steve George for all of his contributions to this website and to the Baldrige process overall. We will continue to focus the site on the same principles that Steve did, which will be to offer insights and information on the Baldrige model as an archetype for performance excellence. We will offer articles, links, and information directly related to the Baldrige categories that will be both relevant and interesting to our readers. We also will have Steve join us from time to time as a guest author.

Baldrige.com will be managed by Joseph A. De Feo, President and CEO of Juran Institute, as well as Tom Huizenga, our General Manager and Baldrige examiner. Both of us were personally managed and coached by Dr. Juran prior to joining Juran Institute. We have led extensive careers in quality management, which includes the Baldrige Award. In addition, Tom and I previously worked for a company that was selected for a site visit during the first year of the Baldrige Award.

Our belief is that the US needs the Baldrige Criteria to help assure our country remains competitive around the globe for decades to come. We will do what we can to assure that happens.

We want to assure our readers that this change will be for the positive; we will strive to provide you with only the most relevant and pertinent information to better your organization and achieve improved competitiveness and business results using with the Baldrige model.

Dr. Juran was a vocal advocate for the Baldrige program. I interviewed him in 1991 for my first book on the Baldrige model and he was kind enough to write a reference for the book. At the end of the interview, he not only invited me to his annual conference, then called IMPRO, but he offered to pay all of my expenses to attend. Before the conference, Dr. Juran delivered, “Making Quality Happen,” which remains one of the most informative sessions I’ve ever taken part in about the value of a systems approach to quality management and improvement.

I quoted him in my book, The Baldrige Quality System: “Prior to the Baldrige Award, any company that didn’t have a quality revolution was confused. Quality consultants were tugging them in different directions. We lost a decade that way. The criteria can become the focal point around which the renaissance can be built.”

Dr. Juran’s prediction has not come true—yet. While Baldrige still has the potential to inspire a quality and performance renaissance, it has not gained the traction enjoyed by programs such as Lean and Six Sigma, in part because Baldrige is not a program. It does not prescribe the exact path you must take to gain world-class results, but helps you understand all of the things you need to improve to achieve performance excellence. It’s a systems approach to building an effective management system that will help your organization reach its goals, now and well into the future.

Baldrige.com now offers more than 600 articles about this systems approach to world-class performance. I can’t think of a better organization to build on this foundation that the Juran Institute, which integrates the Baldrige model in the services it provides. You will want to bookmark this site and check back frequently for the insights and ideas Juran will be posting.

I want to thank you for visiting Baldrige.com. I have enjoyed sharing what I learn with you and look forward to continuing to learn from the quality leaders at the Juran Institute.

Economists Albert N. Link from the University of North Carolina and John T. Scott from Dartmouth College published their evaluation of 45 Baldrige Award applicants on December 16, 2011. The report is available here (pdf). The Baldrige program asked the 274 organizations that submitted applications from 2007 to 2010 to participate in the study and 45 accepted the invitation. Link and Scott used a counterfactual evaluation method to determine the benefit-to-cost ratio, asking what the private sector would have had to invest to achieve the same level of benefits through the Baldrige program. Benefits were realized in three areas:

• Savings to the applicants in investment costs to achieve the same level of benefits from their performance excellence strategies as they realized from the Baldrige program
• Gains by consumers in greater satisfaction from higher quality products and services
• Gains to the economy from saving scarce resources because the Baldrige Criteria were available

As I understand it, the counterfactual evaluation case made by the study is that organizations that integrate Baldrige increase demand because they offer higher quality products and services and they reduce costs because of more efficient operations. They earn more and spend less.

Link and Scott describe the methodology in their report. They concluded that the ratio of social benefits to social costs among the 45 organizations that responded to the survey was 351:1 while the ratio for all Baldrige Award applicants was 820:1. They also extrapolated these ratios by sector: 456:1 for healthcare, 357:1 for manufacturing, and 119:1 for education. While they cautioned against attaching too much significance to these numbers because of the small sample size for each sector, they emphasized that integrating Baldrige benefits all sectors, arguing that the Baldrige program’s benefits “are not specific to any one sector but reflect benefits realized across all of the sectors.”

In their concluding statement, Link and Scott state: “The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is a public-private partnership that…creates great value that could not be replicated by private sector actions alone.”

While the public-private partnership equation is changing with the end of federal funding, the value of the program remains the driving force behind those who are working to reinvent Baldrige to continue to bring value to the U.S. economy.

The opportunities for improvement revealed by a Baldrige assessment contain the logic for acting upon them: Your results are flat or negative because this or that process is broken. Fix the process and improve your results. Measure your progress. Validate it with your customers. Repeat.

Unfortunately, the logic of the change is usually lost to everyone but the leaders who enact it, which can render it ineffective. In a recent article on Forbes, author Carol Kinsey Goman explains why human beings resist change. According to brain analysis technology, our work habits are controlled by a part of the brain called the basal ganglia. When we do things the way we’ve always done them, we feel good. Change stimulates the prefrontal cortex, which is linked to the amygdala, which controls our “fight or flight” response. When change overwhelms the prefrontal cortex, the amygdale triggers physical and psychological disorientation and pain. Even if we know logically that a change is necessary and positive, our brains can react negatively.

Goman offers six suggestions for helping your workforce handle change:

1. Trust people to see the need for change. Communicate information that shows why change is needed. Provide opportunities for people to ask questions and discuss the implications of the change. Help employees reach the conclusions that prompted you to act.
2. Make new ideas become familiar. You cannot over-communicate the reasons for change or how the changes will occur. Develop a communication strategy that uses all available mechanisms—town hall meetings, focus groups, staff meetings, shift meetings, intranet, newsletters, etc.—to talk about the change. As Goman notes, “It takes a lot of repetition to move a new or complex concept from the prefrontal cortex to the basal ganglia.”
3. KISS your communication. Keep is simple. Condense the change into two or three critical goals.
4. Never underestimate the power of a vision. Gorman writes, “I’m talking about a clearly articulated, emotionally charged, and broad picture of what the organization is trying to achieve.
5. Don’t “sugar-coat” the truth. Be honest and realistic about expectations the how the change will unfold. Any deception, whether intentional or not, will be exposed and will heighten anxiety and distrust.
6. Watch your body language. “When discussing organizational change initiatives, there are two conversations taking place, and the second, nonverbal one, can reinforce or sabotage your verbal message,” says Goman. People believe what they see more than what you say, which means you must totally believe in the change before you can convince others of its value.

Every organization must change to survive and thrive. A systematic approach to change that addresses these six suggestions and considers the way our brains are wired can help make change just another work habit.

Baldrige Award winners integrate Baldrige by performing regular—usually annual—Baldrige assessments. The process of producing assessments and prioritizing and acting on the opportunities they reveal institutionalizes a culture of continuous improvement. It keeps everyone focused on what is most important for the organization to grow and excel. It improves the alignment of people and processes with the organization’s goals, objectives, and strategies. Best of all, it delivers results, as the award application summaries of Baldrige Award winners show.

IndustryWeek recently reported on a survey it conducted with TBM Consulting about the impact of continuous-improvement programs on three financial metrics: anticipated revenue growth, operating income growth, and cash flow over the past year. “Across the board, companies with no continuous improvement programs performed worse across all three measures,” Jill Jusko concluded here:

• More than 50% of respondents with no continuous improvement program said they expect revenue growth to be 3% or less in 2012, compared to fewer than 20% of companies with mature continuous improvement programs.
• Nearly half of respondents with no continuous improvement program anticipate operating income growth of 3% or less in 2012, compared to less than half that percent from firms with continuous improvement programs.
• Slightly more than 20% of companies with no continuous improvement programs reported an increase in cash flow over the past year compared to more than 50% of companies with mature continuous improvement programs.

Dabbling in continuous improvement is like dabbling in Baldrige: You may get quick performance bump but it won’t be sustainable. The only way realize the full benefits of integrating Baldrige, which is a proven approach to continuous improvement, is to commit to annual assessments at least until your management system exemplifies the Baldrige core values.

To learn more about how to integrate Baldrige, click on these articles:

• Baldrige Gets Results
• Baldrige Core Values
• How to Integrate Baldrige
• 10 Steps to an Effective Baldrige Assessment

UW-Stout earned the Baldrige Award in 2001. Ten years later it remains passionate about the value of integrating Baldrige. According to Sorenson and Furst-Bowe, “The most important change brought about by our Baldrige experience, which is now part of our culture, was the establishment of an inclusive planning process to ensure that, in Baldrige speak, ‘all arrows are pointing in the same direction,’ and not at cross-purposes.”

Having worked with five Baldrige Award winners, I can attest to the value of aligning processes and people with the goals, strategies, and objectives of the organization. Whether you are in business, healthcare, or education, the ability to focus all activities on shared goals dramatically improves performance and is a major reason Baldrige Award winners achieve world-class results.

Sorenson and Furst-Bowe also state that “the Baldrige model…also led to a number of important innovations, including our e-Scholar or student laptop program, our designation as Wisconsin’s polytechnic university, and our Discovery Center for applied research and economic development outreach.”

Most organizations embrace Baldrige because they want to improve quality and performance and reduce waste. Few think about being more innovative, but “managing for innovation” is a core value of the Baldrige model. As organizations understand and improve their key processes, they build a learning culture that values innovation. “Innovation should be integrated into daily work and should be supported by your performance improvement system,” according to the Baldrige Criteria. “Systematic processes for innovation should reach across your entire organization.”

UW-Stout continues to benefit from its process of integrating Baldrige that began more than a decade ago. Your organization can achieve the same success. Click on the articles below to learn more about the Baldrige model and how it can help your organization excel:

• What Is Baldrige?
• The Baldrige Criteria
• Baldrige Core Values
• How to Integrate Baldrige
• Baldrige Gets Results

To answer these questions, I’ve launched a new project on Kickstarter to research and write a book called The Road to World-Class Healthcare. You can watch a video introducing the project and read a complete description of it here. The key to the book is the research: road trips to 20 to 25 world-class hospitals and medical centers across the country to interview leaders and learn about best practices.

To fund the research, I’ve posted the project on Kickstarter. A Kickstarter project succeeds by gaining backers who pledge financial support in exchange for rewards. Your reward for becoming a backer of The Road to World-Class Healthcare includes exclusive access to audio excerpts of key interviews, photos, and video of best practices. Invest more and the rewards increase. You can find the complete list of rewards here.

One of the reasons for posting this project on Kickstarter, other than to help fund the research, is to see if it can generate interest. If it meets the goal, the book will be written, and that book will appeal to mainstream publishers who expect authors to have a “platform” from which to market and sell their work. Kickstarter will help me build a platform.

Please take a couple minutes to check out the video and project description at Kickstarter here. I hope you will take a personal interest in supporting it. And, since this is a grassroots initiative, please take another minute to let colleagues and friends know about the project.

Thanks for your support!