All Posts Tagged With: "sustainability"
Baldrige Is a Continuous Improvement Program
Those leaders who decide to give Baldrige a spin often focus on the obvious step: conducting a Baldrige assessment. Some may apply for a state award or the Baldrige Award, but most do an internal assessment, which identifies strengths and opportunities for improvement. If the assessment is done right and professionally evaluated, the list of opportunities is long—much longer than any organization can address is one year. As a result, too many organizations only conduct that one assessment, thus missing their opportunity to build a world-class management system.
Baldrige Award winners integrate Baldrige by performing regular—usually annual—Baldrige assessments. The process of producing assessments and prioritizing and acting on the opportunities they reveal institutionalizes a culture of continuous improvement. It keeps everyone focused on what is most important for the organization to grow and excel. It improves the alignment of people and processes with the organization’s goals, objectives, and strategies. Best of all, it delivers results, as the award application summaries of Baldrige Award winners show.
IndustryWeek recently reported on a survey it conducted with TBM Consulting about the impact of continuous-improvement programs on three financial metrics: anticipated revenue growth, operating income growth, and cash flow over the past year. “Across the board, companies with no continuous improvement programs performed worse across all three measures,” Jill Jusko concluded here:
- More than 50% of respondents with no continuous improvement program said they expect revenue growth to be 3% or less in 2012, compared to fewer than 20% of companies with mature continuous improvement programs.
- Nearly half of…
Corporate Social Responsibility Is Unstoppable
“While consumer power for a better world is still nascent, it’s poised to skyrocket. Consumer pressure will greatly expand the breadth and depth of CSR, forcing companies to willfully change their practices,” writes Simon Mainwaring in his new book, We First, excerpted here in Fast Company. (Note: If you want proof that the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement Mainwaring describes has gone mainstream, consider that his book is ranked #19 for all books on Amazon.)
According to Mainwaring:
- 83% of consumers are willing to change their consumption habits if it can help make tomorrow’s world a better place to live.
- 61% have sought a brand that supports a good cause even if it was not the cheapest brand.
- 64% would recommend a brand that supports a good cause, up from 52% last year.
- 56% believe the interests of society and the interests of businesses should have equal weight in business decisions.
- 67% would switch brands if a different brand of similar quality supported a good cause.
The data point to a warning for companies that choose to ignore CSR and to an opportunity for those that embrace it. More and more consumers are factoring corporate social responsibility into their buying decisions.
Mainwaring believes the consumer drive for CSR will become unstoppable for three reasons:
- Many consumers are frustrated and angry at corporations. “Millions of them have been personally affected by the relentless corporate drive for profit above all else, having lost their jobs. These are people who are now distrustful of corporations and intolerant of selfish behaviors that negatively affect their…
Save Money — and the Environment
A national chain of convenience stores reduced annual mileage at one of its distribution centers by 300,000. The question is: Are the chain’s savings considered cost-cutting to improve the bottom line or emission-cutting to improve its green performance?
The answer is: Yes.
Such initiatives mark the intersection of sustainability and business, according to Dhiraj Rajaram in this HRB blog. He notes that the chain has 25 distribution centers across the U.S., which means it can cut millions of miles of transportation costs and emissions by optimizing its transportation routes.
The CEO of an analytics firm, Rajaram has noticed “a surge in interest among Fortune 500 companies for analytical models that help determine the impact of going green on their bottom line.” One-hundred-thirty of the Fortune 500 have officers at the level of vice president or higher who are focused on sustainability.
The Baldrige Criteria ask how “you contribute to the well-being of your environmental, social, and economic systems.” Rajaram suggests five ways to address the well-being of your environmental and economic systems by analyzing the impact of going green on your company’s financial performance:
- Take a close look at your supply chain. Collect baseline measurements of the environmental impact of operations.
- Establish short-term goals. Select an initial project where you can realize a quick impact by improving performance on the metrics you’ve collected.
- Expand the initiative. If the project succeeds, expand it to other areas.
- Communicate your vision. Share your goals and progress with employees, suppliers, and customers.
- Engage the entire supply chain. “Begin with choosing the right vendors,”…
Baldrige Model: How do your senior leaders lead?
Item 1.1 in the Baldrige Criteria asks key questions about how senior leaders lead. The following processes, best practices, and problem areas look at critical issues in this part of the Baldrige model.
Your organization needs processes for senior leaders to:
- Set, review, and refine your mission, vision, and values
- Deploy your vision and values throughout the organization
- Demonstrate their commitment to your values and to legal and ethical behavior, including promoting an organizational environment that requires legal and ethical behavior
- Create a sustainable organization that includes an environment for performance improvement and leadership, accomplishing your mission and strategic objectives, innovation, and agility
- Create a workforce culture focused on the customer
- Create a learning organization, including participating in organizational learning and developing and enhancing their leadership skills
- Conduct succession planning and develop future leaders
- Communicate with and engage the entire workforce including two-way communication, sharing key decisions, and participating in reward and recognition programs
- Create a focus on action to achieve the organization’s objectives, improve performance, and attain its vision
Best practices to consider:
- Senior leaders, including the president/CEO, are personally and actively involved in designing, implementing, improving, and following these key processes.
- Senior leaders align strategic plans and measurement systems with the organization’s mission and vision, and they talk about the mission and vision at every opportunity.
- Senior leaders demonstrate how they value learning by being teachers and learners, sharing knowledge and best practices throughout the organization, and pursuing continuous improvement in all areas of the organization.
- Senior leaders are inclusive, constantly sharing information with employees about direction, decisions, and performance.
Common problem areas:
- The actions…
Baldrige.com on Culture
With more than 400 articles, Baldrige.com has repeatedly addressed the critical elements of a world-class management system. One of those elements is your organizational culture. Click on the “links” below to read more about how to create and sustain a culture that supports your vision and mission.
Your culture dictates how your organization will behave (link). Disconnects such layoffs, excessive executive compensation, and environmental or safety violations are evidence of why so many organizations—and so many organizational cultures—fail (link).
USAA has developed one of the most successful cultures in the business world by treating its employees well (link), which then extends to exceptional treatment of its customers (link) (link). One of the ways organizations like USAA develops such compelling cultures is by creating a shared vision for what the company is and what it wants to become (link). Creating a shared vision is one of the most important jobs of senior leadership (link), as is the development of an achievable mission and vision (link)
Sustainability is a key characteristic of a robust culture. The goal is to build a sustainable organization that can survive change in whatever form it takes (link), which means addressing the four parts of true sustainability: social, economic, environmental, and cultural (link). Companies like the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company sustain their best-in-class performance because new leaders recognize the value of sustaining its culture (link), while companies like Cadillac recognize the value of learning how the Ritz does it (link). Zappos is a relatively new example of how to build a sustainable culture (link)
Although…
19Oct2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedImplications of a $300 House
How would the world change if you could build a house for $300? Who would benefit? What would it require? Could it affect your organization?
There is a movement afoot to “bring together people, institutions, and businesses in a ‘creation space’ to turn this idea into a reality and test it out in the field.” Before you dismiss it, check out the Web site devoted to the concept by clicking here.
A lot has been written lately about serving customers at the bottom of the pyramid. Grameen Bank has been doing this since 1976 when Muhammad Yunus pioneered the idea of microfinancing with the goal of helping to eradicate poverty. Today, the bank has more than 7.5 million customers.
That’s the promise of the bottom of the pyramid: millions to billions of potential customers. When you factor in the opportunity to do well by doing good, this market is appealing to many companies.
Whether or not it appeals to you, you will want to consider the impact it may have on your organization. To figure out a way to make low-cost, low-tech, green houses that homeowners can build themselves out of local materials, innovation must take place. Breakthrough processes must emerge. New ways of thinking must take root. How will they reshape the construction industry? What will they mean to the companies that supply that industry? How will they challenge governments and education?
A lot of companies are busy devising ways to serve the bottom of the pyramid through banking, cell phones, computers, energy, clean…
4Oct2010 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedAdverse Impact on Food Safety
The Baldrige Criteria ask: How do you address any adverse impacts on society of your products and operations?
The question seems particularly relevant in the wake of the recent egg recall, which followed high-profile problems with lettuce, peanuts, spinach, and peppers. When it comes to the potential for adverse impacts on society, food safety ranks right at the top—which makes the behavior of many in the food industry appalling.
“The food industry is jeopardizing U.S. public health by withholding information from federal food-safety investigators or pressuring regulators to withdraw or alter policies designed to protect consumers,” stated a recent article in Reuters. (“Industry Sway Endangers U.S. Food Safety,” Reuters, September 15, 2010)
The Union of Concerned Scientists sent a survey to about 8,000 people working on food safety at the FDA and the USDA. About 1,700 responded, with 60% identifying themselves as inspectors. One-fourth of the respondents had “seen corporate interests force their agency to withdraw or modify a policy or action designed to protect consumers during the past year.” Not during their careers as inspectors but just in the last year.
Thirty-eight percent said that “public health has been harmed by agency practices that defer to business interests.” Nearly a third mentioned one reason these agencies defer to business interests: The people making the decisions used to work for the food or agriculture industries.
The article quotes Dean Wyatt, a USDA veterinarian who oversees federal slaughterhouse inspectors: “Upper-level management does not adequately support field inspectors and the actions they take to protect the food…
29Sep2010 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
