Held since 2004, the conference features case-study presentations that describe real-life issues and how organizations are dealing with them. It’s a smaller conference—usually around 100 people—that encourages asking questions, discussing problems, and exploring solutions. You will walk away with practical and proven ideas for dealing with your most challenging issues.

Most of the presenters use ActiveStrategy software to turn strategic plans into measurable results, but you don’t have to be an ActiveStrategy client to benefit from the experiences of the presenters, which include:

• Clayton Fitzhugh, executive VP of share services for Catholic Health East, will talk about “A Leader’s Role in Performance Excellence.”
• Allison Diego, assistant director at the Miami-Dade County Park & Recreation Department, will describe her department’s journey to receiving the Florida Sterling Award.
• Scott Walters, vice president of national accounts for AlliedBarton Security Services, will speak on “Using Performance Metrics to Win Business and Manage Customer Relationships.”
• Leaders from Aria Health will talk about “Measuring and Managing Performance from All Angles.”
• Col. John Harris, assistant adjutant general for Army, Joint Forces Headquarters-Ohio, Ohio National Guard, will discuss “Pushing Excellence through Organizational Barriers.”
• Patricia Jaar-Watson, manager of strategy realization at Merck, will speak about “Achieving Alignment at Merck through Strategy Execution.”
• Wayne Ferch, CEO of Feather River Hospital, a three-time California quality award winner, will talk about driving results at his hospital.
• Mark Graham Brown, author of Baldrige and performance measurement books, will speak about “Developing Customer Metrics that Actually Work.”
• Two managing directors from Root Learning will address “Next-Generation Strategic Planning Techniques that Drive Clarity and Alignment.”
• Jack Steele, ActiveStrategy’s CEO, will talk about “Driving Dramatic Improvement.”

If you are a leader involved in deploying a performance management and measurement framework at your organization, this conference will help make that deployment smoother and more effective. Click on the blue banner on the right to learn more. If you decide to attend, don’t forget to enter Baldrige11 for a special $100 discount.

You can see a diagram of the City’s performance measurement system at the end of this article. You can read more about the City’s system and the performance measurement systems of six other Baldrige Award winners in our free report, “How Baldrige Award Winners Measure Performance.” Just follow the arrow in the column on the right to sign up for this free report.

The City’s measurement system links all activity to the strategic plan and business plan, defines success in measurable terms, measures success, and uses data analysis to improve processes.

For example, the City noticed that its crime rate was creeping up slightly in 2006. It compared that trend to regional and national trends and found that, while its rate was lower than neighboring communities, the City’s upswing was not part of a general upward trend. Further analysis of its data showed that one particular type of crime, larceny, was the primary cause of the upswing. By focusing on larceny, the City uncovered and broke up an identity theft ring, which reversed its crime rate trend.

Key intended outcomes in the City’s strategic plan are the basis for a performance agreement between the city manager and City Commission. The city manager negotiates performance agreements with each department, which, in turn, are incorporated into each staff member’s performance evaluation. In this way, the actions in the strategic plan and the measurement system are cascaded throughout the organization to all employees.

As the figure below shows, the City of Coral Springs’ uses performance data at all levels to align resources, support decision-making, and communicate results.

To read more about performance measurement, click on these articles:

• FREE REPORT: Baldrige Award-Winning Performance Measurement
• 10 Critical Questions: Data, Information & Knowledge
• How to Develop a Balanced Scorecard
• Aligning with Strategies & Measures
• Baldrige ROI

I’ve recently worked with an entrepreneurial company that has more than two thousand employees worldwide and annual revenues approaching a half-billion dollars—and it has no strategic planning process. Its “strategic plan” is whatever the founder and CEO decides to pursue, which means the plan has many consistent elements year to year plus a stream of new ventures that aren’t even on the radar screen when the year begins. It’s a highly innovative, flexible, and agile company that has grown by 15% or more a year for nearly three decades. Such results suggest that its “strategy” is working.

From a Baldrige perspective, however, I can see how a more systematic approach could be beneficial, especially in the areas of:

• Involvement by more participants. More voices in the discussion would help clarify the issues and the opportunities and engage more people in owning the plans they help design.
• Inputs to the process. A more formal approach to gathering and analyzing critical information upon which any plans are based would minimize the risk of missing something important.
• Alignment. A company aligns its people with what it is trying to accomplish through a strategic plan and performance measurement system. If you have neither, the risk is that resources are being wasted on irrelevant activities.
• Communication. A strategic plan and the deployment of that plan through action plans communicates what is important to the company. Without that communication, uncertainty is more likely as people react to whatever signals they are getting from the CEO.

The question is: How do you develop a more systematic planning approach without stifling the innovation and agility that have made this company successful? Does the Baldrige model allow that such an approach may be vital for an entrepreneurial company?

In “Adopt a Cow: Strategy as Improvisational Theater” (HBR, October 12, 2010), Rosabeth Moss Kanter writes that, “For entrepreneurs and innovators, it’s absurd to equate strategy with a Plan, with a capital P, all wrapped up in one neat package to be studied and followed slavishly.” Baldrige Award winners follow a Plan, with a capital P. Could an organization without such a neat package win the Award?

To read more about strategic planning, click on these articles:

• Challenge Your Assumptions
• The Most Important Question in Strategy
• Revolutionary Thinking
• Be Prepared
• Developing Agility on 3 Fronts
• Where to Play and How to Win
• Making Your Organization Adaptable

When I get this question, I suggest starting with one or more of the 3 P’s: processes, people, or planning.

Start with Processes. The Baldrige model is a process model because the work of an organization is done through processes. Organizations that haven’t taken a formal approach to process management usually spend way too much time firefighting because their processes are out of control, or they blame people when their processes fail. Neither is a prescription for long-term success.

You can develop a process orientation by first identifying your key work processes, which Baldrige defines as your most important internal value creation processes. If you’re not sure where to start, look at what products and/or services you provide to your customers and figure out the internal steps that design, produce, and deliver those products and services. Then consider the support processes that make these customer-driven processes possible, such as your key processes in sales, marketing, finance, human resources, IT, etc. Once you’ve identified your value creation processes, assign a process owner responsible for each, usually a senior leader with the authority to allocate resources and remove obstacles. Form process improvement teams to map each process, identify areas to improve, and determine in-process and end-of-process measurements. Provide training to the teams in how to do this and set up a process for reporting and review.

Start with People. Most organizations that have struggled to excel fail to make the most of their people. They put them in little boxes and tell them exactly what to do and wonder why their competitors are faster and more innovative and how they manage to get the most talented people.

As the Baldrige Criteria states, “an organization’s success depends increasingly on an engaged workforce.” So engage them. Identify the key factors that motivate them to become engaged (and that doesn’t mean relying on some generic employee satisfaction survey for your list). Develop a performance management system that supports individual and organizational performance, aligns individual goals with the organization’s mission and strategic plan, addresses individual development, and includes regular reviews, feedback, and coaching throughout the year. Invest in training on the knowledge and skills that will create an empowered, engaged workforce.

Start with Planning. An organization achieves performance excellence by aligning its people and the work that is being done with the mission and vision of the organization. Most organizations take a more scattered approach that fails to link people and activities with any guiding direction. As a result, progress is inconsistent and hard to sustain.

The Baldrige model values alignment, which is defined as “consistency of plans, processes, information, resource decisions, actions, results, and analyses to support key organization-wide goals.” Everybody’s pulling in the same direction. The key mechanisms for alignment are the strategic plan and the performance measurement system. You can read about how Baldrige Award winners measure performance by signing up for our free report in the box on the right of this page.

As for strategic planning, start by assigning people or teams with the responsibility of bringing critical information to the planning process including a careful examination of your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and current status and expected changes in technology, competitive environment, markets, products, and customer preferences. Involve people from all corners of the organization in the planning process. Link your strategic goals and objectives to your mission and vision and then develop action plans that support the goals and objectives. Cascade those plans throughout the organization to every department and employee. Establish a review cycle: Most organizations are moving to a 90-day action plan and review process.

To find out more about each of the 3 P’s, read the Baldrige Criteria (Category 6 for processes, Category 5 for people, and Category 2 for planning) and see how Baldrige Award winners answer those questions in their award application summaries. The Criteria and the application summaries are available here.

The report shows a diagram of the measurement system and the balanced scorecard used by the Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center.

It presents the five-step measurement process used by Heartland Health and shows how it aligns its key measures.

The report includes the City of Coral Spring’s performance management system and talks about the performance agreements the city uses to align the strategic plan with its measurement system.

It lists the criteria MidwayUSA uses to select comparative data.

It describes the types of analysis that Cargill Corn Million performs and how its leadership team sets priorities for improvement.

It shows a diagram of the organizational performance reviews conducted by Premier.

It lists the criteria Iredell-Statesville Schools uses to select its key performance indicators and the process senior leaders use to review performance.

You can also learn about the common elements these award-winning organizations share and how you can use them to create an effective approach for your organization.

Sign up for your free report today and you will automatically receive free copies of the first two reports in this series on performance management and process management.

Sign up today!

This question from the Baldrige Criteria assumes that you have good answers for the questions that precede it on selecting, collecting, aligning, integrating, and analyzing data and information, because if you don’t do these things well, there won’t be much of value to communicate. But if you have sound processes in place, the critical step in an effective performance measurement system is getting the right data and information in the right hands at the right time.

Very few organizations spend time on how they communicate key data and information. For most, it’s numbers on a chart. A few balanced scorecard followers use a stoplight approach alongside the numbers: green light means on target, yellow light means not quite, red light means trouble. A small percentage shows trend lines and benchmarks for their key measures to give users context for current performance. And that’s about it when it comes to communicating data and information, which is why it is always refreshing to discover a creative way to share information.

GE is awarding $200 million to ideas that help build the next generation power grid. It is accepting ideas in three categories: renewables; grid efficiency; and eco homes/eco buildings. You can read about the more than 1,800 ideas that have been submitted thus far—the Ecomagination Challenge ends September 30^th—by clicking here.

GE has taken an innovative approach to communicating this information. Each idea is a dot. The dots turn on an axis that begins with the first day the competition opened on July 13^th. You can “spin” the dots by clicking and dragging anywhere on the screen. The dots are color coded by type of idea: create power (orange), connect power (green), and use power (blue). The bigger a dot, the more votes it has received, and the bigger the halo around a dot, the more comments it has gotten.

For example, most of the biggest dots focus on creating power:

• Scott suggested solar roadways using recyclable solar panels that can be driven on. (2094 votes and 728 comments)
• Clarian Power offered plug-n-play solar power, a power module that plugs into an outlet to generate power instead of using it. (1476 votes and 90 comments)
• sbphelms’ idea is vertical-axis wind turbines on the roofs of tall urban buildings. (1301 votes and 184 comments)
• E.G.G. suggested an electric generator powered by garlic vegetables. (1189 votes and 99 comments)

The number of votes and comments suggests that GE’s infographic has done an excellent job of communicating information and encouraging interaction, and that’s an effective answer to the Baldrige question about how you make information available.

To read more about measurement, click on these articles:

• Data from a New Perspective
• Making Better Decisions, Faster
• How to Develop a Balanced Scorecard
• Communicating Performance on Key Measures

An academic report by the Economic Policy Institute argues that “the nonrandom assignment of students to classrooms and schools—and the wide variation in students’ experiences at home and at school—mean that teachers cannot be accurately judged against one another by their students’ test scores, even when efforts are made to control for student characteristics in statistical models.”

Although that makes a lot of sense, I understand where the push for value-added gauges comes from. As a parent, I’ve never felt that the effectiveness of my children’s teachers has been evaluated in any meaningful way. Average and incompetent teachers return, year after year, to inflict their ineptness on their students. Lacking any reportable measures of competence, they are unaccountable for their performance except as part of an aggregate school’s overall performance. Teachers need to be accountable for the quality of their work, but measuring that quality has been elusive.

The EPI report offers alternatives that rely less on test scores such as “systematic observation protocols with well-developed, research-based criteria to examine teaching,” but, as the report observes, “American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically developing and evaluating teachers.” And this is only getting worse as shrinking budgets cut funds needed for teacher development.

If nothing else, the value-added gauges will force schools and teachers’ unions to come up with better measures of teacher quality. Without that motivation, no measures will be found because nobody welcomes performance measures. I don’t know how many companies I’ve worked with where one department or another claims that what they do cannot be measured (and often, it’s marketing). Well, it can. It may not be easy. Your first attempts to measure performance may fail. But if you don’t persist, if you choose not to measure teacher performance, how can education at your school possibly improve?

To read more about quality education, click on these articles:

• Best-Practice Teaching
• School Districts Saving Money
• Lessons from High-Performing K-12 Schools
• Inspiration for a New Education System
• Reinventing Education with Baldrige
• Baldrige and K-12: Not for the Faint-Hearted