Malcolm Baldrige Criteria – A Business Excellence Model

The New Zealand Business Excellence Awards

A press release statement dated on 21/10/09 was published at http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0910/S00556.htm announced the New Zealand toughest and most prestigious business excellence awards which uses criteria that are fully aligned to the international respected US Baldrige Award Criteria.

The New Zealand Business Excellence Awards are administered by the New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation which set guidelines. One of them is for applicants to compete against a rigorous international benchmark such as the Baldrige Award Criteria

According to the media release, there are two distinct tiers to the awards that is the highly prestigious 2009 New Zealand Business Excellence Awards and NZ Business Achievement Awards. The Business Achievement Awards are an abridged but still tough version of the full Baldrige aligned New Zealand Business Excellence Awards.

 Click Here for original press release

2009 Excellence in Government Conference:
Who is Missing from the Party?

Are large scale system failures becoming more common, or are we just getting better at finding them? But does it matter? Look at the impact on all of us: broken financial and regulatory systems, inefficient health care systems, failing educational systems (only 71% of American eighth grade students graduate 4 years later with a high school diploma), accelerated job losses through off-shoring and industrial failures… we not only CAN do better, we MUST do better.

Which brings us to the 2009 Excellence in Government Conference held in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2009. Reviewing the online agenda (http://www.excelgov.com), amidst announcements that “experts are studying what is required for success in federal programs” and “the administration is focusing on technology to transform the federal government”, we found the following statement:

“The Obama administration issued a mandate for agencies to achieve a high performing workforce.”
A mandate? This seems to imply that there are organizations out there that do NOT want a high performing workforce.

We have a different view. A “high performing workforce” does not take a “mandate”. It takes knowledge, theory, discipline, and a system designed for success.

This is not a Democratic or Republican criticism. Every incoming administration mandates a new approach to performance management across the federal government and its 2.2 million employees.

We have done enough work in the public sector to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the systems and the people who work in these systems.

Which brings us to the central question: Where is Baldrige? Why are we about to embark on yet another cycle of “new” management initiatives when the federal government already has within it direct access to arguably the world’s finest performance excellence system, the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence? At the same time that world-class companies and government agencies around the world are achieving transcendent success through the Baldrige System, here is Washington, DC, Baldrige is a no-show at a conference ostensibly dedicated to excellence in government.

Interestingly, as we are writing this newsletter, the following announcement came into our inbox from the Arabian Business News:

“Using the Baldrige criteria, organizations assess their management systems to identify the strengths of their systems and the opportunities for improvement. This assessment, evaluation, and improvement process helps them embed the Baldrige core values in their cultures, leading to excellent results… We are about building better organizations and ensuring those organizations are prepared to go forward on the global stage. We envision the Middle East and North Africa region as a center of excellence that the rest of the world sets their standards by, not the other way around.”
(http://www.arabianbusiness.com/press_releases/detail/39697)

Were only this vision shared within our own government.

The lesson is clear. We in the Baldrige community are on our own. But we already know that. We will patiently ride out the “mandates” and “new” initiatives and stay focused on doing the best possible job we can every day, enlightened and empowered by the knowledge that a Baldrige-type process is not the easiest path to take, but it is the only enduring method for achieving long-term results that matter.

source: Global Insights. Global Performance Systems, Inc. http://gpsinc.us. Copyright 2003-2009 Craig Anderson. All rights reserved.

The Leadership Initiative Trait

 simply defined, initiative is a trait someone has in them to take on task without having being told or instruct. Among leaders, this initiative traits is more an expectation. To acquire this trait, it requires training and cultivation.

Between initiative and decision making, it is merely a fine line in between and confusion often arised to differential the two. Take an example to illustrate; the floor is wet at the entrace, customer who walk in may trip. An initiative would be to realize the web floor and take action to clean up immediately without being told. Of course you need to make a decision to clean it up but the difference is you did it without being told

 An effective leader should discover employee who take the initiative to do the right thing as opposed to waiting to be told. Worst thing is some employee has a tendancy to wait for someone else do it. You should observe employee with outstanding initiative which is an indicator for maturity and potential. However, you should take action immediately you have discovered the initiative else it will fade away over time. To sustain employee take out their initiative, leaders should take action to encourage such initiative and give employee an opportunity to take on heavier task is his initiave warrants it

“Monkey see Monkey Do” is a phrase which describe employee tend to follow what the leader does. If you want to cultivate a “take Initiative” culture, you as a leader not only need to show leadership by example but also need to motivates employee who do so with the appropriate recognition.