All Posts Tagged With: "management system"
Leadership Matters Most
The ease or difficulty in transforming a management system lies with the leaders of that system. I’ve worked with five Baldrige Award winners and in every case, their executives drove the renovation of their management systems. No company did it the same way: Some had it mastered in a few years while others took a decade or more. Not every senior leader felt strongly about the Baldrige model or the evaluation and improvement process it supports, but as long as the top executive did, it didn’t matter.
Executive attitudes toward creating a sound management system regularly surprise me. Those who recognize its value preach this systems perspective with the fervor of true believers. Those who don’t buy into it bide their time until the boss leaves and they can return to what they know is best. The trouble is, what they know is best is rarely as good as the systems approach they abandon.
Motorola, IBM, and AT&T dominated in the late 1980s and early 1990s when their leaders conducted regular, formal assessments of their management systems. As that process waned, so did their fortunes. AT&T formed its Universal Card Services division in 1990 with a management system based on the Baldrige model. In its first 30 months of existence it rocketed to second largest in the U.S. credit card industry, winning the Baldrige Award in 1992.
Thirty months after that it floundered, hobbled by new leadership that deserted the systems approach in favor of “better ideas.” Thirty months after that, in October…
21Jul2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Organization You Want
What information do you need to build the organization you want?
We’ve been answering that question now for one year with nearly 370 articles on all aspects of a world-class management system. Our guide for what to address is the Baldrige model defined by the Baldrige Criteria and used to determine Baldrige Award winners. No other management model in the world has been as thoroughly tested, refined, and deployed.
The goal of any management system is to produce the results you want your organization to achieve. Ideally, those results align with your organization’s mission and vision. In world-class organizations, results are multi-dimensional and not just profits for a business or test results for a school. The Baldrige Criteria identify six areas where excellent results are necessary for long-term success.
The rest of the Baldrige Criteria address the development and deployment of the systematic processes needed to achieve world-class results. The Baldrige model is a process model: It asks how you do what you do more than 130 times.
Process has four dimensions:
- The approach you use to get something done
- Consistent deployment of the approach to all relevant areas of the organization
- Refining the approach through cycles of learning
- The integration of your approach with the rest of your management system
Questions about your processes are organized in six Categories: leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, workforce focus, and process management. Everything you do to run your organization fits into one or more of these Categories.
The articles on Baldrige.com explore the Categories, as you can see by clicking on one of the…
12Jul2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedGet Out of the Office
A recent post by Seth Godin got me thinking about a question in the Baldrige Criteria: How do you design and innovate your overall work system?
Godin’s post, Goodbye to the office, asks why people go to their office, plant, or factory. As he notes, “If we were starting this whole office thing today, it’s inconceivable we’d pay the rent/time/commuting cost to get what we get. I think in ten years the TV show ‘The Office’ will be seen as a quaint antique.”
I’m not so sure about that. True, we’ve already seen a trend toward more telecommuting, but the office mentality is so ingrained that it will take a few organizations revolutionizing the way we work—and making it fun, desirable, and profitable—to really get this ball rolling, and I don’t think that’s going to be widespread in ten years.
Having said that, the organizations that abandon the office concept in favor of something more efficient and relevant to today’s world will carve out an immediate competitive advantage. Young workers in particular will be attracted to the idea. They are already used to a more flexible environment with their phones and their friending and their connecting with friends through their phones. If they want to get together, they figure it out on the fly and it seems to work. There’s no reason meetings couldn’t be organized the same way. People worry about the social aspect of an office but, as Godin writes, “You can get energy from people other than those in the…
22Jun2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedLearning from the Ritz
The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain has won two Baldrige Awards because of the quality of its management system. A key element of that system is how well it trains and empowers its hotel workers to satisfy and delight customers. Any employee can spend up to $2,000 on his or her own to improve a customers’ experience. Would you trust your employees with that responsibility?
Now an unlikely company has brought in trainers from the Ritz to show their dealers how to create a consistent sales experience and create loyal customers. The company? Cadillac.
According to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, “Cadillac has copied Ritz’s pocket-sized ‘Credo’ cards, which explain how customers should be treated.” Cadillac service managers now have greater flexibility to “wow” customers. One dealer in the Chicago area gave employees $300 to $500 in “wow” money, which may be an iffy proposition if the employees haven’t been trained in how to dole out that money responsibly. The last I heard, new employees at the Ritz receive more than 250 hours of training in their first year of work, and a good part of that training is in customer service. Without the training, the “wow” money may just become, “Wow, look at all the money we wasted.”
It’s all about the culture and the management system. Companies that try to emulate one chunk of a world-class system without having the culture and the other key elements of the system in place may see short-term improvement, but it won’t last. The system will absorb…
21Jun2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBureaucracy Detector Test
As a native Iowan, I’m proud to pass along the Bureaucracy Detector Test, developed by Iowa’s Department of Management to expose performance gaps in state government. It turns out that, with a few wording changes, you can apply the test to any organization. Here’s the test:
Bureaucracy Detector Test
Rate the following on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 7 (often):
- ____ To what extent do agencies in your jurisdiction feel accountable for following rules, regulations, and procedures prescribed in law or policy?
- ____ To what extent do agencies in your jurisdiction feel accountable for producing measurable outcomes for people?
- ____ To what extent to agencies in your jurisdiction encounter rules or procedures that impair their ability to perform?
- ____ To what extent are agencies in your jurisdiction allowed to interpret the application of a rule or law themselves, as opposed to having someone in another agency responsible for enforcing the rule or law make the interpretation?
- ____ To what extent do agencies in your jurisdiction spend time or money to comply with rules, laws, or reporting requirements that they feel are a waste of time?
- ____ To what extent do the people in agencies responsible for enforcing administrative rules and regulations understand the work in a frontline agency and what is important to the success of the frontline agency in meeting the needs of those that agency serves?
Scoring
For the odd numbered questions, enter the sum of the three numbers here: ____. For the even numbered questions add the three numbers, subtract the total from 21,…
25Mar2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedMaking Change Happen
This is a guest article by Arnie Weimerksirch. If you want to contribute an article to Baldrige.com, check out the guidelines here.
Change is difficult. In our personal lives we struggle to break bad habits, eat a healthier diet, or get more exercise. In spite of our good intentions, we often fail.
Organizations also find it difficult to change: Studies show that almost 85% of change initiatives fail. Even when faced with a crisis, many organizations are not able to make the changes necessary to survive. As W. Edwards Deming said, “Survival is not mandatory; it is purely optional.”
In 2004, on the 50th anniversary of the Fortune 500 list, only 71 of the original 500 remained on the list. Not all of them failed, of course, but the majority did. And they failed because they were not able to change with the times.
Why is change so difficult and what is the answer? One of the main reasons transformation initiatives fail is our love of management fads. In her book, Fad Surfing in the Boardroom, Eileen Shapiro defines fad surfing as “the practice of riding the crest of the latest management panacea and then paddling out again just in time to ride the next one; always absorbing for managers and lucrative for consultants; frequently disastrous for organizations.”
New management theories are constantly developed by “gurus” and published in prestigious journals. Recent examples include the boundaryless organization, job sculpting, reengineering, and, yes, Six Sigma. Most of these new management theories turn out to be nothing more…
8Feb2010 | admin | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise
When you’re doing Baldrige, it’s easy to get immersed in fixing the problems with your management system, which is good as long as you also keep looking outside your organization to see if adopting a new system should get as much attention as improving the old one.
For example, Padmasree Warrior wrote on Cisco’s blog (click here) about the Next Generation Collaborative Enterprise (NGCE), which is a very different type of management system. Here’s how she describes it:
Priorities are set by clusters of experts that make decisions. Decisions are communicated real-time through social media applications. Work is shared on a secure collaboration technology platform. Individuals are able to apply themselves to the work based on their skills and availability, regardless of their geographic location. Expertise outside the Enterprise is included ‘on-demand’ to bring necessary knowledge to bear. Funding is directed based on milestones. Direct accountability is embedded into the social network. Finally, organizational functions become less relevant and ‘Re-orgs’ become obsolete. Leadership is defined as the ability to influence, envision, and execute―rather than the authority to command and control.
Despite its innovative design, NGCEs must still address the components of a management system addressed by the Baldrige Criteria, which Warrior lists as “strategy and planning, delivering value to customers and partners, human capital, innovation and design, manufacturing and distribution, marketing, and messaging.”
28Jan2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
