All Posts Tagged With: "small business"
Baldrige Expands Reach to Small Businesses
The Baldrige program is expanding its reach to small businesses through a new collaboration with the Alliance for Performance Excellence and The Alternative Board (TAB). The Alliance is a nonprofit network of national, state, and local Baldrige-based award programs. TAB provides peer advisory boards and coaching services for small business leaders.
According to a press release from the Baldrige program, the state programs will work with TAB boards across the country to help small business operators learn the Baldrige Criteria and use the Criteria to assess and improve performance.
The new effort drew praise from Terry May, president of MESA Products, a 2006 Baldrige Award recipient in the small business category. “TAB is a great resource for learning and sharing with my peers,” May said, “providing real-world, practical guidance to help me improve and grow my business. The Baldrige process, both at the state and national levels, helped me take MESA to an even higher level of performance and achieve breakthrough results. So, a partnership between local TAB boards and state Baldrige programs will be a great resource for small businesses.”
The collaboration between the Baldrige program and the Alliance is another indicator of the new relationship between the programs. Earlier this month, the Baldrige program…
29Dec2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedSmall Business Fundamentals
Small business owners and leaders must wear many hats. With fewer employees than a big company, they are closer to the action, their days filled with pivotal moments when decisions must be made and steps taken that could alter the fortunes of their company.
In such a challenging environment, it helps to have a management system that can guide your decisions and support the steps you take. The Baldrige model provides such a framework.
Twenty-two small businesses have won the Baldrige Award, including three in 2010. While a company may have up to 500 employees to qualify for the small business category, several winners have had fewer than 100 including Stoner, the smallest company ever to win. Stoner had 43 employees when it received the Baldrige Award in 2003.
I worked with Custom Research, which had 75 employees at the time, when it won the Award in 1996. I remember the tension that the Baldrige framework created by requiring formal processes in a few key places, like strategic planning, where informal approaches had served the company well. Custom Research strengthened its processes and, to the Baldrige program’s credit, Baldrige examiners received specific training on how to better evaluate small businesses.
The small business leader…
24Jan2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedSmall Wonder
Stoner expects every one of its employees to be a leader. Before starting their jobs, new employees complete two weeks of orientation that includes shadowing every job in the company—including that of the president. They can do all that in two weeks because Stoner only has 45 employees.
Located in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, Stoner makes specialized cleaners, lubricants, and coatings, primarily for car care. In 2003, it became the smallest company to win the Baldrige Award.
“We first learned about Baldrige in 1991 through the local Lancaster County program,” said Rob Ecklin, Jr., Stoner’s president. “We started to familiarize ourselves with the criteria then.” Stoner became the first company in the county to win the award in 1995. A few years later it submitted its first Baldrige application.
“We like to learn, to challenge ourselves and to be challenged,” said Ecklin. “Only a small percentage of companies truly want to improve. We’re one of them. We get excited about performance excellence. This is not a sexy business. It’s not high tech. Not flashy. But we’ve been able to get extraordinary results from ordinary people.”
Stoner gets these results by expecting every employee to be a leader. It involves all employees in setting the direction for…
24Jun2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Universality of the Baldrige Model
Any organization of any size or type can integrate the Baldrige model. It wasn’t always that way.
When the Baldrige program started, the Criteria reflected the quality movement in manufacturing. While service organizations could apply for the Award, few had similar experience with quality management. They had trouble relating the Criteria to their businesses. It took three years for the first service company, FedEx, to win the Award.
The Criteria evolved. With the feedback of experienced examiners, NIST made the Criteria more “user-friendly” for service companies and then, in the mid-90s, for small businesses. In this decade, the Criteria have become relevant for healthcare and education and then for nonprofits and government agencies.
Today, every organization can integrate the Baldrige model. Scan the lists of state award winners if you need evidence of that (click here to find their Web sites). And it’s not just every organization in the United States: International programs based on the Baldrige model demonstrate its universality (click here to find out more).
Every organization likes to think it’s unique—at some level, it is—but on the key factors that affect organizational performance, it doesn’t matter what you do. A manufacturer can learn how to improve strategic planning from a medical center. A…
5Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
