Sustainability Forces Wheel

In strategic planning, the quality of the plan depends on the quality of the information collected and analyzed to guide the plan. The Baldrige Criteria ask how you collect and analyze information about your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats; early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, products, customer preferences, competition, or the regulatory environment; long-term organizational sustainability; and your ability to execute your strategic plan.

The goal is to build a sustainable organization that can survive change in whatever form it takes. Andrew Winston has created a tool to help navigate the forces that may affect your organization’s survival. He calls it the Sustainability Forces Wheel.

In “A New Tool for Understanding Sustainability Drivers” (HBR, July 13, 2010), Winston describes the three rings that make up his wheel and his idea to “spin” the wheel to line up different forces on each ring, which could then spur discussion among leaders about what that combination might mean for their organization. For example, he looks at the issues that currently line up at 9:00: “Consumers increasingly want to know what’s in products and where they come from; technology is enabling more data on a product’s origins; and there’s no denying the rising concerns about chemicals and toxics in our bodies and our children’s bodies. If your company operates in the consumer products world, how are you handling this trifecta of concerns?”

From a Baldrige standpoint, your strategic planning process should include a systematic approach to identifying the factors that are likely to impact your short-term…

Sustainability: A Business Imperative

If your organization isn’t on the environmental responsibility bandwagon yet, what are you waiting for? Last year Wal-Mart announced plans to investigate more than 100,000 suppliers with a Sustainability Index. Now, according to Fast Company, “IBM is following Wal-Mart’s lead by asking its 28,000 suppliers in 60 countries to establish environmental goals and measure energy conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste management/recycling practices.” (“IBM to Suppliers: Embrace Sustainability…Or Else,” Ariel Schwartz, April 14, 2010)

The Baldrige Criteria ask how you consider societal well-being and benefit as part of your operations, including the environmental systems to which you contribute. As with everything in the Baldrige model, acting on your environmental responsibility requires well-defined  and deployed processes that align with your mission and vision and support sustainability and long-term success.

IBM seeks the same systemic approach by its suppliers. According to Wayne Balta, IBM’s VP for corporate environmental affairs and product safety, “We want them all to build long-term sustainability in a way that is integral to their routine operations, not as an add-on fix.”

The Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program (VACSP) Clinical Research Pharmacy Coordinating Center, which won the Baldrige Award in 2009, is a small organization of approximately 112 people that supports and manages drug-related activities in clinical trials. In its application summary, it describes how it considers societal well-being and sustainability:

“As a small organization, the Center has a culture of improvement, including a strong commitment to conserving natural resources and to environmental stewardship. The Center maintains a constant focus on process improvement and…

Baldrige for the 20-Teens

Gill Corkindale is an executive coach and writer based in London. She recently wrote an article about Baldrige for the Harvard Business Review entitled “A Better Decade for Business is Coming” (December 31, 2009). And she wrote it without using the word “Baldrige” once!

Corkindale lists four things business leaders can do to correct the negative perception of business built during the past decade (Enron’s collapse, dotcom bust, Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, irresponsibility of the banking sector, global recession, declining wages—unless you’re an executive, etc.). Her four recommendations are:

1. Examine your organization systematically. “What is really going on?” she writes. “What needs to be improved?” In other words, conduct a Baldrige assessment to answer these questions and systematically improve your organization.
2. Build a new dialogue for business. Leaders must make ethical behavior, accountability, sustainability, longer-term focus, and community awareness part of the business agenda. Once again, a Baldrige assessment will help you understand how to make these issues part of your agenda and how well you do it.
3. Engage people to make the best possible contribution to the business and wider society. “This means sharing power, information, responsibility, and, of course, rewards,” writes Corkindale. Workforce engagement, a key element of the Baldrige model, considers how you share power, information, responsibility, and rewards.
4. Understand what it really takes to be a leader. “Simplicity is the key.” A Baldrige assessment helps leaders lead by presenting a clear picture of where their organization is today and how it can improve performance tomorrow.

To learn more about integrating Baldrige, click on these articles:

• Is Baldrige…

5 Added Values of the Baldrige Process

This is a guest article by Paul Grizzell. If you want to contribute an article to Baldrige.com, check out the guidelines here.

When visiting with senior leaders about the value of embarking on a Baldrige journey, a frequently used phrase is, “It’s not about the Award.”  At that point, the discussion moves to writing an application, and the sense of leaders is: “We’re applying for an Award!”  How do we convince leaders that there is value within the Baldrige process above and beyond applying for Baldrige or a state or local quality award?

Leaders need to understand what value the Baldrige process provides if it’s not just about the award, especially considering the investment of time involved in developing a 50-page application.

In my experience, five “added values” of the Baldrige process demonstrate the benefit of developing a Baldrige application—even if you never submit the application to an award process.

1. Accountability Tool. The structure of the Baldrige process forces accountability.  When senior leaders take responsibility for a particular Baldrige category, they “own” the linkage among the three components of the application:

• Organizational Profile: What is important to the organization?
• Process categories: Based on what is important, what do we do, and how do we do it?
• Results category: Now that we’ve done it, were we successful?

2. Sustainability Tool. The Baldrige process helps document how business is done at the organization.  The departure of a senior leader doesn’t have to mean we start all over again.  The application describes how the organization operates; a new senior leader…