All Posts Tagged With: "OFIs"
How to Integrate Baldrige
Once senior leadership has decided to integrate Baldrige, the first thing you need to do is a Baldrige assessment. Read “10 Steps to an Effective Baldrige Assessment” for guidance on how to do this.
There’s no shortcut around this step. Sure, there are Baldrige surveys and abbreviated assessments you can do, but they do not provide feedback about all elements of your management system, nor do they give you an accurate picture of your entire management system. You need a full-blown assessment to effectively integrate the Baldrige model.
The ninth step in the assessment process is to act on the evaluation. The evaluation will have a number of opportunities for improvement (OFIs) across all categories of the Criteria and a few major OFIs that affect multiple areas. Start with these. As a senior leadership team, discuss the evaluation and the OFIs and prioritize them based on what you believe is most important for the short- and long-term success of the organization.
Next, figure out how you will tackle the top two or three OFIs. The reason it’s only two or three is that these opportunities are big, cross-functional gaps like redesigning the strategic planning process, developing a balanced scorecard, or implementing a formal approach to process management. If you don’t have a systematic process in place for acting on these opportunities, this is a…
25Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedExperts Tell You What to Fix
People ask why an organization should apply for the Baldrige Award or a state award based on Baldrige. There are three very good reasons:
- Answering the Criteria questions will give you a new and deeper understanding of how your organization works—or doesn’t work.
- Getting feedback from the Baldrige or state program will help you identify strengths you can build upon and opportunities for improvement.
- Acting on what you learn during #1 and #2 will make you a better organization.
I described the application process in an earlier article. In this article, I want to discuss the feedback you receive when you submit an application.
First, a quick overview of what happens to a Baldrige application after you submit it. (State programs follow a similar process.) Trained examiners are assigned to evaluate and comment on the application. A team of examiners then reviews the application and observations by conference call to reach consensus on your strengths, opportunities for improvement, and scores. If the Panel of Judges does not select your organization for a site visit, one of the examiners on the consensus team produces your feedback report. If you do receive a site visit, the site visit team leader finalizes your feedback report after the judges decide who should receive the Award.
The feedback report begins by identifying the key themes both for the process Items, which…
12Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBlessed with OFIs
At the latest Quest for Excellence, an annual event where the previous year’s Baldrige Award recipients discuss their management systems, the leaders of the three winning organizations answered audience questions for about a half-hour. The YouTube video of that panel discussion is here.
The plant manager for Cargill Corn Milling was asked how his organization prioritizes the opportunities for improvement (OFIs) it gets from the Baldrige feedback and from Cargill’s Business Excellence process. He noted that they got a total of 131 OFIs from the 2008 feedback reports. Their leadership group used a priority matrix to rank the OFIs based on their importance to Cargill Corn Milling’s mission, vision, and purpose. They then decided to work on the top three OFIs this year.
For people new to Baldrige, a couple of things may be surprising about this. First is the fact that a Baldrige Award recipient got 131 OFIs. What you have to remember is that recipients typically score in the 650 to 750 point range. The missing 250-350 points are OFIs. There are no “perfect” organizations.
The second surprise is that, out of 131 OFIs, the organization is working on just three. I think that’s misleading. In my experience, improving performance on those top three OFIs will lead to improvement on several others. For example, addressing an OFI that questions how systematically…
1Sep2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
