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 respondents with no continuous improvement program anticipate operating income growth of 3% or less in 2012, compared to less than half that percent from firms with continuous improvement programs.
• Slightly more than 20% of companies with no continuous improvement programs reported an increase in cash flow over the past year compared to more than 50% of companies with mature continuous improvement programs.

Dabbling in continuous improvement is like dabbling in Baldrige: You may get quick performance bump but it won’t be sustainable. The only way realize the full benefits of integrating Baldrige, which is a proven approach to continuous improvement, is to commit to annual assessments at least until your management system exemplifies the Baldrige core values.

To learn more about how to integrate Baldrige, click on these articles:

• Baldrige Gets Results
• Baldrige Core Values
• How to Integrate Baldrige
• 10 Steps to an Effective Baldrige Assessment

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:

1. 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 lives and their planet.”
2. Many consumers, especially Millennials, won’t tolerate corporations and brands that neglect purpose or weasel their way around being responsible citizens. If you “greenwash” (lie about the ecofriendliness of your products), “cause-wash” (advertise support for a cause that you actually do little or nothing to support), or “local-wash” (claim your products are locally made when they’re not), you will be vilified.
3. Consumers believe capitalism needs to evolve. “Consumers will increasingly seek to conduct their business transactions only with corporations and brands that practice purposeful capitalism with transparency, authenticity, and accountability throughout their entire supply and sales chains.”

To read more about CSR, click on these articles:

• Baldrige Model: How do you govern and fulfill your societal responsibilities?
• Sustainability: A Business Imperative
• Strategic Value of CSR
• Corporate Social Responsibility in 2010
• Save Money – and the Environment
• Not CSR: Shared Value

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:

1. Take a close look at your supply chain. Collect baseline measurements of the environmental impact of operations.
2. Establish short-term goals. Select an initial project where you can realize a quick impact by improving performance on the metrics you’ve collected.
3. Expand the initiative. If the project succeeds, expand it to other areas.
4. Communicate your vision. Share your goals and progress with employees, suppliers, and customers.
5. Engage the entire supply chain. “Begin with choosing the right vendors,” Rajaram writes, “then incorporate green compliance checks and choose vendors not just on price but also based on quality and environmental factors.”

To read more about sustainability, click on these articles:

• Sustainability: A Business Imperative
• Sustainability Forces Wheel
• 4 Parts of True Sustainability
• P&G Sets High Bar for Environmental Responsibility
• Porter: CSR Is Dead End

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 and direction of senior leaders do not align with or support the organization’s mission and vision.
• Senior leaders are not personally involved in guiding their organization to performance excellence.
• Senior leaders are narrowly focused on financial performance to the detriment of focusing the organization on customers, learning, performance improvement, and excellence.
• Senior leaders guard information about direction, decisions, and performance and fail to routinely communicate with employees.

To read more about how senior leaders lead, click on these articles:

• What Great Organizations Achieve
• Leadership Matters Most
• 30 Principles of Effective Leadership
• Servant Leadership Boosts Employee Engagement
• Baldrige.com on Culture
• Leading Also Means Managing
• Communication Tips for Leaders

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 the cultures of Baldrige Award winners are unique to each organization, Baldrige organizations share cultural characteristics that differentiate them as a group including process thinking, acting on data (link), knowing where they’re going, aligning activities, blurring boundaries (link), treating people well, and continually improving (link).

As the Award winners show, a proven, effective way to create and sustain a culture that supports your vision and mission is to integrate the Baldrige model (link).

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 water, transportation, food, and other essentials. They are hotbeds of innovation, and the ripples of that innovation will be felt worldwide.

To read more about disruptive technologies, click on these articles:

• Challenge Your Assumptions
• Managing for Innovation
• Revolutionary Thinking
• Be Prepared
• Where to Play and How to Win

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 supply. Not only is there a lack of support, but there’s outright obstruction, retaliation, and abuse of power.” Wyatt should know: He was demoted by the USDA for documenting violations.

The majority of companies in the food and agriculture industries do their best to answer the Baldrige question within a system that is obviously broken. Business interests supersede consumer interests whenever the people making the decisions defer to what is best for companies. The only way to fix this system is to remove these conflicts of interest and to refocus the FDA and USDA on their primary mission, which is to protect the public health.

To read more about social responsibility, click on these articles:

• Guided by Your Culture
• BP and Oil Company Irresponsibility
• Do You Know Your Externalities?
• Sustainability: A Business Imperative
• How to Build a Culture of Social Responsibility