My own personal observation is that the Baldrige National Quality Program is one of the most misunderstood, unknown and poorly marketed great programs for organizations seeking a framework for business performance improvement.
Cash for Clunkers, it ain’t! We would all be better off if it got one-tenth of the airtime of that well documented automobile sales promotion.
What’s the first thing that you think of when you hear Baldrige? Of course, quality jumps to mind and specifically, thanks to advertising, many people think of automobile quality. If you’re like most people, you’ve seen pictures of the actual glass award in commercials and you might have even viewed a clip of one of our Presidents shaking hands with the CEO of a Baldrige winner.
I recently asked a small group of professionals what they knew about the Baldrige program and one person asked whether it wasn’t a quality award for winners of the JDPower survey! At least she was partially right, as quality is an important component.
OK, and in my opinion, that’s the other misnomer. Certainly the program has its roots in Quality (with a capital Q), but it’s much more comprehensive than the many other very good programs and frameworks that focus specifically on quality and process improvement.
Baldrige is a comprehensive framework for organizational performance excellence, focusing on seven core categories (the criteria):
- Leadership
- Strategic Planning
- Customer and Market Focus
- Measurement Analysis and Knowledge Management
- Workforce Focus
- Process Management
- Results
From the Baldrige website: ‘The criteria are designed to help organizations enhance their competitiveness by focusing on two goals: delivering ever improving value to customers and improving overall organizational performance.’
This is much bigger than measuring defects. This is much bigger than a glass trophy.
Resources You Can Use Immediately:
I encourage business professionals at all levels to become familiar with the Baldrige program and the treasure trove of incredible materials…many of which are either free or low cost.
Read: The Criteria for Performance Excellence. It’s better than a month of MBA courses on understanding the criteria in detail and what factors are considered when evaluating high performance in those areas.
Download and Use: the two great surveys: “Are We Making Progress” and “Are We Making Progress as Leaders”. These are free, and you are encouraged to use, copy, distribute and employ these surveys inside your organization. (Note to my many leadership blogging/consulting/training friends, this content is golden!) Even outside of the umbrella of formal pursuit of the Baldrige Award, these survey instruments can prove remarkably helpful for any firm attempting to assess where it is at on many levels.
Review: the Judges Survey of Applicant Satisfaction presentation summarizing the survey results on what prior participants have to say about the program. Most joined for the purpose of driving improvement…not to win an award. The participants also indicate areas of improvement for the Baldrige process and examiners.
Purchase and watch: for $35 plus shipping and handling, the detailed Award Recipient DVDs. While there is a bit of program hype, mostly you’ll gain context on how some now pretty impressive small and large companies have used the program to dramatically improve their organization’s performance. These live case studies are priceless.
Talk: to a Baldrige program award winner or an examiner. The program and participants are remarkably open to inquiries and to sharing experiences and highlighting what to expect if you decide to pursue the process. Watch the videos and place a few calls and you’ll have some remarkably fresh insights and ideas on the program and how it might help your business.
Consider: applying. While there is ample material on what is involved and there will be time required to apply…and of course to assess, you gain access to some of the best, low to no cost business performance consulting on the planet through the Baldrige examiners. Again, don’t underestimate the commitment required to benefit from the process, but don’t run away from it because of that either.
The Bottom Line:
It’s time to shake our misperceptions about Baldrige. It is a powerful framework for business performance improvement. I’ve dealt with many CEOs that behind closed doors admit to not being certain about where to start and what to focus on to fuel results.
Before you call on the expensive consultants, take a few hours and investigate Baldrige. You might just find some great starting points.
Thanks for the resources, Art. As is usual with this sort of thing, I like the process far more than I like the program. Your pointers to the process framework can help any organization whether they want the trophy or not.
Art, I strongly concur! This is an exceptional program. ANY business can benefit by thinking through the MBNQA framework. I once took a class in TQM and the instructor was a former MBNQA examiner. He got Joe Juran on the phone one day to speak to class and Joe Juran said he considered the MBNQA a definition for TOTAL quality management. Great stuff!! Bret
Bret, thanks for the comment and your vote on the MBNQA program. You are partially responsible for this post based on your excellent post, “Measurement Happens.” Your effective debunking of some of the more popular tools being utilized for measuring employee engagement prompted my thinking about the tools available at Baldrige.
Nice Juran encounter! My close encounter with a Quality deity was attending a seminar put on by my company with Dr. Deming.
Thanks for the comment! -Art
Art,
I’m familiar with Baldridge though I haven’t really followed it in a couple years. The reason being that so many of the award winners found themselves in deep financial trouble after winning the award. For example: Motorola, 3M, Cadillac, Xerox, Westinghouse, AT&T, Boeing etc.
All these companies won the award and had near death experiences shortly there after. At least among the people I mixed with, the belief was that the types of companies that won the award focused too much on internal processes and missed major shifts in the market as a result.
As an Industrial Engineer who’s education was deeply steeped in TQM, I believe there is a place for awards like Baldridge, but it’s like chocolate cake. At small slice is nice and gives operations people something to salivate over. Too much and you get sick.
Andy, it’s always fun to have you on board as the consistent contrarian. My thoughts:
-Blaming the framework is like blaming the chocolate cake for making you fat. To my knowledge, no piece of cake has yet jumped up and jammed itself down anyone’s throat. Although, I think it occasionally talks to me!
-See also Motorola’s involvement in TQM long before Baldrige. (I could go on at considerable informed length about this interesting company…but you are absolutely right, they missed the market. Their former employees also are happy to highlight the horrible quality and rework programs that they lived with while in the heyday of their quality initiatives.)
-There are some great companies that have prospered over the years that give credit to the framework as their business planning tool.
My key point was not the award, but the wisdom contained in the 7 criteria. If you get a chance, re-read the criteria and I would be happy to discuss which of those you could get too much of. -Art
8/26/09: Midweek Look at the Independent Business Blogs…
Every week I select five excellent posts from this week’s independent business blogs. This week, I’m pointing you to posts on using Baldrige guidelines to re-make your business, one step beyond MBWA, promotion case studies, measurement, and changes i…
Wally, thanks so much for the honor! Much appreciated. -Art
Art,
I don’t know if being called a contrarian is a good or bad thing, but in this case I’ll go with Aristotle, who advised “all things in moderation.” That certainly applies to these seven criteria.
Leadership. The three greatest leaders of the 20th century, i.e. the people who changed the world the most, were Hitler, Mao and Stalin. Peter Drucker, being Austrian, had good reasons for being leery of “Leaders”. Leadership can be a great thing or it can be a disaster. Please see Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Bob Nardeli at Home Depot and Chrysler. (I could reuse Nardelli to argue in favor of moderation in process focus, but I’m not that cruel.)
Leadership, in moderation, is a good thing. Personally, I like a LOT of moderation in my leaders. The examples I’ve listed are well known, but there are many others, much less famous, that I would just as soon moderate with cement boots in the middle of Lake Michigan.
Strategic planning is important. It’s an overworked analogy, but nonetheless true, that if excellent tactical execution were more important than strategic planning, the Germans would have won WWII. Fortunately, the Allies had a better strategic planing and that made up for horrendously bad tactical execution and a horrific loss of human lives, especially for the Russians.
That being said, consulting organizations and I will name names: McKinsey, Bain, BCG etc. overuse the term “strategic planning” the same way used car dealers overuse the word trust. And they inspire the same sensation.
Strategic planning is important and should be done by people whose lives and careers are invested in the corporation and who understand the intricate details of how strategy interacts with tactical execution and operations. It should not be proposed twenty-somethings with Harvard MBAs who understand Excel analysis and detailed powerpoint presentations, but have never worked in a business. Strategic Planning is great right up to the day you hire a consultant. The day a company hires strategic planning consultants, the downfall is near.
A good rule of thumb, if you can describe your strategic plan with pictures on a bar room napkin when you’re drunk, it’s probably a good strategic plan (think SouthWest Airlines, Kinko’s and WWII.) If it requires deeper analysis then that, it probably won’t work, think of what McKinsey did to Kinko’s, GM etc.
Customer and market focus vs Process Improvement. Customer focus is absolutely important and one of the main problems with being process focused. Process improvement is about focusing internally on improving operations. The problem with focusing internally is that companies often stop focusing externally. These two have to be kept in balance. Most businesses can’t focus so exclusively on customer support that they don’t use processes to achieve efficiencies. Likewise, they can’t focus so much on internal processes that they lose sight of their customers. It’s “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, this balance is one of the toughest to keep. Moderation is the key to that balance.
Measurement analysis and knowledge management. I wouldn’t group these two together, but I’m not Baldridge. In the world of software engineering, which is really all I know, I’m a huge fan of applying analytics and lean manufacturing. I love the work Andrew Chen (http://andrewchenblog.com/) and Eric Reis (http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/building-new-startup-hub.html) are doing applying lean manufacturing and split-test analysis to startups. They are bringing discipline to an area that needs it.
The knowledge management part I’m not so sure of. KM shouldn’t cost money. It really should be called thinking. Business leaders are paid to understand ramifications, think, and act. If they need to buy software or hire consultants to think for them, they should be fired. As Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan/Bank One is famous for saying – “No consultants. We better know our business better than anyone.”
Workforce focus – this is really the result of articulate strategic plans and clear tactical direction. As a friend of mine whose a commander in Afghanistan is fond of saying, your strategy better be clear and obvious enough that over excited nineteen year olds with guns in the mountains, know what to do and why. Unfortunately, this neither true in Afghanistan nor most businesses. Maybe the answer to workforce focus is that strategic plans and tactical directions need to be written on bar napkins. Too much analysis leads people to think they’re too clever and they try to do things that are too complicated and workplace focus impossible. Less is more. Was there ever a more moderate statement?
Results should be measured in terms of financial results. America has been successful for so long that people have forgotten that there are only two types of businesses. Not-for-profit businesses and for-profit-businesses. Not-for-profits’ do wonderful work and fill a necessary space in the world and in give people the opportunity to do good work, network and learn new skills. For profit businesses exist for one and only one reason – to make a profit. Those are the results that count, of course, some moderation might be helpful here.
To get back to your comment:
“My key point was not the award, but the wisdom contained in the 7 criteria. If you get a chance, re-read the criteria and I would be happy to discuss which of those you could get too much of.”
All of these things are important and all of them need to be moderated. If you want to take any one of them to the extreme, I’ll be happy to debate on the side of moderation. I’m even willing to bet beer-n-brats at the Hofbrauhouse on the outcome.
Does that make me a contrarian?
Andy “the moderate” Meyer
Andy, I meant in only the highest of regards! Great post! I’ll let it stand on its own well-informed merits. And heck, I’ll spring for the beer and brats just to enjoy the good natured debate. Cheers, Art
I couldn’t agree more with your opening statement. I created Baldrige.com to help get the word out about the value of the Baldrige model and to create an online gathering place for people who want to create and work for well-run organizations.
As for the skeptics who point to the failures of Baldrige Award recipients, I recently posted two articles in response. In “Responding to Critics,” I quote Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and, most recently, How the Mighty Fall, who wrote, “Just because a company falls doesn’t invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.”
No organization is even close to perfect, Baldrige Award winners included, but those organizations that strive to integrate the Baldrige model can show results among the best in their industries. I encourage the doubters to actually read the Criteria for Performance Excellence and the application summaries of award recipients to see the power in this process. Both are available at the Baldrige program’s Web site at http://www.quality.nist.gov.
Steve, that goes double for me! Thanks so much for chiming in and adding some first-hand context. I’m working through “How the Mighty Fall” and love that quote. Great, site, great tools, great framework. I reference Baldrige regularly in my keynotes and workshops on performance excellence. Best, Art