All Posts Tagged With: "systems perspective"
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…
18Jan2010 | Paul Grizzell | 0 comments | ContinuedPay Yourself First
It’s easy to acquire tunnel vision. There are jobs to do, projects to complete, and meetings to attend. Your organization is probably running lean, which means you’re responsible for your job as well as big chunks of work from coworkers who’ve moved or left. It’s hard to find the time to do anything well, much less learn and grow. Like the organization, you are sacrificing long-term considerations for short-term necessities. Focus on what’s in front of you. Get through the day.
Financial planners tell their clients to pay themselves first with every paycheck. Take a small amount from each check and put it in savings. Even when money is tight. Even when you have urgent needs in front of you. Don’t squander your future by being short-sighted. Pay yourself first.
The same concept applies to your work life. Take a few minutes from each day and use it to increase your value. Step back from the tunnel and broaden your understanding of how your entire team, department, and organization work. Identify your customers and what they require and how you can make them more satisfied and loyal. Learn how the processes you are part of function and how you can improve them. Find the data and information you need to evaluate and improve performance. Determine how what you do serves the mission, vision, plans, and goals of the organization and if it doesn’t, realign. Figure out what…
28Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedKnowledge Management 2.0
The Baldrige Criteria ask four questions specifically about how you manage knowledge in your organization:
- How do you collect and transfer it internally?
- How do you transfer it from and to customers, suppliers, partners, and collaborators?
- How do you identify, share, and implement best practices?
- How do you assemble and transfer knowledge for use in your strategic planning process?
In his book, Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges (Harvard Business School Press, 2009), Andrew McAfee describes how organizations use emergent social software platforms to capture and share knowledge, identify and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds.
These platforms include wikis, Twitter, Facebook, and other software tools. In an interview (you can listen to it here), McAfee, principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for Digital Business, talks about how these tools fuel a shift in “aerating your work.” One example he uses is the U.S. intelligence community, which saw its inability to manage knowledge exposed on 9/11. Since then, the intelligence community has deployed new 2.0 tools including launching an internal Wikipedia, encouraging blogging within strict guidelines, and developing a search function to improve access to shared information.
McAfee sees two hurdles most organizations must overcome to take advantage of these new tools. First, leaders are not aware of how the tools work and how the new tools can improve internal knowledge management. Second, they’re afraid that using the tools will make it impossible…
7Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedFixing the Financial System
How does your organization review and achieve accountability for management’s actions? For fiscal accountability? For transparency in your operations? For protection of stakeholder and stockholder interests?
If every financial institution in the U.S. had been forced to answer these Baldrige questions honestly and accurately in the past few years, and if regulators had been verifying their responses, the financial crisis and the bailout it triggered could have been averted. Either they would have had processes in place to deliver ethical and effective leadership or their irresponsible practices would have been exposed.
“I think the last two years have revealed the single largest failure of senior management in the financial sector, and of the board system in American history,” wrote Bo Cutter in new deal 2.0 (November 24, 2009). Cutter has been a managing director of Warburg Pincus, a global private equity firm, and led President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget transition team. Considering the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s and 1990s and the scandals involving Enron and Worldcomm earlier this decade, one could argue that senior management and boards of directors in the financial sector have been failing miserably for thirty years. One could also make the case that the government agencies responsible for overseeing these financial institutions failed miserably, too.
This systemic failure cannot be fixed by feeding the system, as the bailout does, or by chastising the senior leaders no matter how good that…
4Dec2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWant to Be a Star?
Star status depends on what an organization needs. When organizations need to be more efficient and effective, the quality gurus are the stars. When they need financial wizardry, the bean counters become stars. When technology rules, the stars work in IT. And since they always need leadership, senior executives are reigning stars.
New stars are now emerging: “Today, people with power and influence derive their power from their centrality within self-organizing networks,” observed Rosabeth Moss Kanter in “On Twitter and in the Workplace, It’s Power to the Connectors” (HarvardBusiness.org, November 16, 2009). The title clarifies her quote by naming today’s stars: the connectors.
Connectors know people. Their personal networks stretch across the organization. They understand how the organization works and who makes it work. They are ideally positioned to make the connections that improve processes, enhance communication, and strengthen the management system.
You can use Baldrige to become a connector. I’ve seen it happen countless times. If your organization is producing a Baldrige assessment or application, get involved in the process. Many organizations form a core team to manage the process and category teams to respond to questions in the Criteria. Join a team. As you participate in the research necessary to answer the questions, you will gain a broader understanding of how your organization works. You will meet leaders in other parts of the organization. You will become a connector.
If your organization isn’t doing Baldrige, apply to become…
17Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Case Against Incentives
The tenth of W. Edwards Deming’s 14 points is to “eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force.” In other words, incentive pay is bad.
In “The Dark Side of Incentives” (BusinessWeek, November 12, 2009), Barry Schwartz concurs: “The inescapable flaw in incentives, as 35 years of research shows, is that they get you exactly what you pay for, but it never turns out to be what you want.”
You need look no further than the incentive practices of our large banks to see the truth in these statements. Pay bonuses for short-term results without any regulator on how those results are achieved and you will get the results you want, but at what cost?
Deming reminds us that low quality and low productivity—in fact, 80-90% of all problems an organization faces—are problems with the system. Since management controls the management system, 80-90% of all problems are management problems that the workforce is not in a position to resolve.
Not only are incentives an ineffective substitute for leadership, but they also negatively affect how people make decisions. Incentives tend to remove the moral dimension from decision-making. Without a financial incentive, people consider their responsibilities to their team or department…
16Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedHow to Become a Baldrige Expert
You may be wondering why anyone would want to become a Baldrige expert. As if you don’t have enough to do, right?
Here’s the value as I see it; you can decide if it’s worth your time:
- You learn how organizations work, which helps you understand how your organization works.
- You learn about each key component of an organization, which gives you context for what you are doing.
- You think differently about the work you do and the challenges you face, paying more attention to process, measurement, customers, employees, alignment, and integration.
- You acquire skills that make you more valuable to the organization and that give you more options in the future.
There are two ways to become a Baldrige expert: (1) participate in Baldrige assessments or (2) serve as a Baldrige and/or state award examiner.
Participating in a Baldrige assessment forces you to understand the Criteria questions and figure out how your organization should respond to them. Most people start by working on a Category team. For example, you may be part of the Category 3 Customer Focus team that must answer all of the questions in this Category. The task means understanding how Category 3 relates to the rest of the Baldrige model, interpreting the questions for which you are responsible, finding the answers through internal subject matter experts, and writing responses. You learn Baldrige by working with it, and that knowledge deepens with each successive assessment.
You can also become a Baldrige…
9Nov2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
