Baldrige National Quality Program's "Improvement Day"

Steve Brant will participate in the annual Improvement Day of the Baldrige National Quality Program, 25 July 2007 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD. Steve will be participating in his capacity as a founding board member of the Keystone Alliance for Performance Excellence, which champions the use of the continuous learning and improvement organizational development methodology throughout Pennsylvania.

Because the mission and values of Trimtab Management Systems include elements of the Baldrige Program as well as the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement, Steve will be working at this Improvement Day to build an intellectual bridge between these two movements. What makes this "bridge building" so timely is the fact that both the Baldrige Program and the Brundtland Commission's Report (which helped launch both the sustainability and CSR movements) began 20 years ago, in 1987. Twenty years into their parallel journeys, perhaps the "mission" of sustainability will join with the "method" of continuous learning and improvement to create a powerful, sociological systemic redesign wave that will wash across all the organizations around the world.

The Baldrige National Quality Program is a member of the Global Excellence Model Council. which links it to the world's other organizational excellence networks. This increases the probability that what happens in the Baldrige National Quality Program will ultimately transfer to the rest of the global organizational excellence movement.

Because people familiar with Baldrige are invited to submit improvement suggestions in advance of the Improvement Day's activities, Steve has taken the opportunity to submit the comments below. Steve will report back on the results of Improvement Day.
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Suggestions submitted in advance of Improvement Day:

A very high-impact improvement is available to the Baldrige National Quality Program, if it decides to market itself in service to the continuous improvement efforts of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) movement. The corporations and non-profit organizations that make up this movement are talking seriously about the need to increase the effectiveness and impact of their individual and group efforts.

I know this from direct experience because I am involved with the one CSR network specifically committed to a "continuous learning and improvement" philosophy: The UN Global Compact. The Global Compact's "Performance Model" (PDF document) explicitly mentions the quality management profession (TQM, Baldrige, Dr. Deming, PDCA, etc).

In a related development, the book "Total Responsibility Management" - which uses the language of TQM to address improving the CSR movement and has a chapter entitled "Improvement and innovation systems" - was published earlier this year. I know one of the authors of this book, Sandra Waddock of Boston College.

This convergence of needs with ideas represents a HUGE opportunity for the Baldrige National Quality Program to serve the growing number of CSR-focused organizations in America, including some of the largest (Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Ford, HP, Pfizer, Time Warner). It will require some work to develop the appropriate marketing effort. But this new service - improvement services tailored to the Corporate Social Responsibility movement - is something that can give the Baldrige National Quality Program a quantum leap in visibility, impact, and support.

For more information, please contact Steve Brant, Board Member of the Keystone Alliance for Performance Excellence. Steve@TrimtabManagementSystems.com

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The Baldrige Program should cease the "activity" of acting as an "improvement island unto itself". (You know the expression "No man is an island, entire of itself..") The corporate and non-profit worlds are currently engaged in an ever-expanding, increasingly public improvement effort devoted to solving the crisis of global climate change (and other global issues such as corruption). But the Baldrige Program - which has the potential to offer "thinking tools" that can make this effort much more effective than it currently is - is largely invisible to the organizations and people in America engaged in this critically important effort. Because it can lead to a huge increase in visibility and demand for its programs, the Baldrige Program must seriously consider stopping seeing itself as just about "generic organizational improvement". It must stop ignoring trends in the business and non-profit world that - if tapped into - can help it grow its customer base big time.

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Regarding the CEO Issue Sheets, those dealing with global issues (August 2000: A Global Approach for a Global Economy; Fall 2001: Recognizing Role Model Practices of World Class Organizations; Undated: Performance Excellence Delivers World-Class Results) should be updated to reflect the current concerns of the world's businesses. Improving the environment and labor relations, safeguarding human rights, and fighting corruption are on the agendas of CEO all over the world (including the United States), thanks to the increasing influence of the Corporate Social Responsibility movement as championed by such organizations as Business for Social Responsibility and The UN Global Compact. Some of the Baldrige CEO Issue Sheets were written before this movement became the mainstream movement it is today. (By mainstream I mean supported in America by Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Ford, HP, Pfizer, Time Warner, and others.) As a result, the continued use of these documents portrays the Baldrige Program as being out of touch with the current concerns of America's businesses... as not sharing the "improvement concern mindset" of America's business leaders. Please note: I do not mean to suggest that the Baldrige Program's leadership and staff are unaware of these concerns. What I am suggesting is that the effort necessary to bring the Baldrige Program's documents in alignment with that up to date awareness has yet to occur. Improving these CEO Issue Sheets will go a long way towards showing the business world that the Baldrige Program is applicable to what is on their radar screens today. An appropriately formulated survey of all past Baldrige applicants would no doubt harvest a rich collection of Corporate Social Responsibility-related stories which could be used to update these documents.

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"Are We Making Progress As Leaders?" is designed to identify areas that need improving. However, the questions asked do not focus on a significant core competency of any successful organization (and a core competency that is the focus of business magazine cover stories and of the best selling business book - Amazon.com Sales Rank No. 306 in Books - "Blue Ocean Strategy"). The questions do not focus on INNOVATION.

Where the subject of innovation might be expected to come up (Category 1: Leadership), the questions talk about organizational values guiding employees, creating a work environment that helps employees do their jobs, and asking employees what they think. The fact that the words "innovation" or "innovate" or the phrase "doing something that's never been done before" do not appear leaves any prospect of measuring the support for innovation within the leadership dynamic of the organization's culture completely up to chance.

Similarly, in Category 2: Strategic Planning, question 2a talks about asking employees for their ideas. This question would come down much stronger on the ability to measure innovation if it said "...we ask our employees for creative ideas that challenge our organization to create new products or services for markets that don't currently exist." (This way of thinking is the essential message of "Blue Ocean Strategy".) The weakness of Category 2 on this subject is compounded by the language of question 3c, which addresses the classic subject of listening to one's customers. While giving customers what they want remains a critical business requirement, in order to focus on innovation question 3c should be followed by a question that reads "Our employees look for ways to delight their customers by giving them what they don't yet know they can have.

Finally, Category 7: Business Results talks about work products that meet all requirements and employees' time and talents being used well. "Meeting all requirements" is a completely external standards-based results question. By definition, it fails to measure where employee work products exceed requirements because one or more employees did something creative. And whether one is using one's employees' time and talent well could be judged as being a "yes" if all standards are being me all the time; but again that could also mean a "no" on the question of whether an employee is doing anything creative. This question should be modified (possibly split into two questions), so that the subject of meeting standards is measured (since that is important) as well as the subject of exceeding standards through creative work efforts.

Finally, as relates to the (now mainstream) Corporate Social Responsibility movement's recognition that leadership in the community extends beyond the classic model of supporting employees in doing good works in various charities, a question should be added after "Our organization helps our employees help their community." that says something like "Our organization builds the core principles of sustainability into our daily strategic and operational processes." (This is where the whole subject of being a "good corporate citizen" now lies, confirmation of which can be found on the web sites of company's such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Ford, HP, Pfizer, and many others.)
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The Baldrige Program is presently designed to champion and support "generic improvement efforts", because it was formed out of the recognition that "how we do what we want to do" is as important as "what we want to do". "Method is as important as Mission." However, as we approach the 20th anniversary - on August 20th - of the signing of Public Law 100-107 which created The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, this should be a time to step back and take a long, hard look at whether just championing "improvement methodology" is enough. For those who are just looking to "improve" their organizations, perhaps that still is enough. However, if the declining health of the State & Local Programs is any indication, "improvement for its own sake" is going out of fashion. Organizational leaders are increasingly asking themselves "What strategic need does the effort I spend at re-thinking my organization serve?" For a great many organizations, that "need" is to be a more sustainability-focused organization...to go beyond "doing no harm" or "giving back to local charities" to "redesigning all organizational processes along the principles of sustainability". (Just ask the CEO of Coca-Cola, who recently announced that his organization is working to become a "water neutral" business...one that puts back into the environment as much water as it takes out.) You have to look hard to find a recognition within Baldrige of the concept of sustainability. In order for a program meant to have the attention of the top leaders of an organization to have their attention in today's business world, that word and concept should be front and center.

Coincidentally (or perhaps it's not such a coincidence), 2007 is also the 20th anniversary of The Brundtland Commission, formally the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), which coined the now standard definition of what sustainability is: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (For more info, see the Brundtland Commission report.) As can be seen by examining the quality management-based Performance Model of corporate social responsibility advocacy organization, The UN Global Compact, and the recently published "Total Responsibility Management", the advanced "mission" of sustainability is converging with the advanced "methodology" championed by the Baldrige Program.

Therefore, I propose that the Baldrige Program initiate a plan to (a) expand how it defines its mission from being "for the benefit of all residents" of the USA to "for the creation of sustainable businesses in a sustainable society", to (b) expand its programs to specifically show its relationship to the Corporate Social Responsibility movement through the "common ground" of The UN Global Compact's Performance Model", and (c) to expand and redesign its outreach efforts to include participating in recognized corporate social responsibility forums in the USA, starting with the Business for Social Responsibility conference October 23-26 in San Francisco

Baldrige Quality Program State & Local Programs' Annual Workshop

Steve Brant will be participating in the annual State and Local Workshop for the national network associated with the Baldrige National Quality Program, 22-24 July 2007 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, MD.

Steve is a founding board member of the Keystone Alliance for Performance Excellence, which champions the continuous learning and improvement philosophy of organizational improvement throughout Pennsylvania. In this capacity, Steve is working to build support for an alliance between the continuous improvement organizational development profession in the United States (best represented by the Baldrige Program) and that portion of the corporate social responsibility movement that recognizes the need to use a continuous learning and improvement approach to its work.

The "common ground" between the two is The UN Global Compact's Performance Model (PDF document), which is based on what is commonly known as "quality management" (as developed by management theorists such as Dr. W. Edwards Deming).

The Global Compact's Leadership Summit

Steve Brant will be participating in The UN Global Compact's Leadership Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, July 5 - 6, 2007.

Trimtab Management Systems has been a participant in The Global Compact since October of 2001. Steve is recognized for having encouraged The Global Compact to adopt its continuous learning and improvement approach - a quality management approach based on the work of legendary management theorist W. Edwards Deming which is detailed in the book Raising The Bar - as well as for championing a whole systems approach for the work of The Global Compact.

Raising The Bar grew out of the work of The Global Compact's Performance Model development group, which was led by Claude Fussler of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Steve was an active participant in this group.

The Journalism That Matters Conference

As part of his work to improve the probability that information about how much better society can be reaches the public at large, Steve Brant will be participating in the Journalism That Matters Conference in Washington, DC, August 7-8. For more information, go here: Journalism That Matters.

Speaking: The International Center for Corporate Accountability

Steve Brant will be speaking at the International Center for Corporate Accountability's Second International Conference: "Globalization and the Good Corporation" on June 27th. Steve will be part of the "UN Global Compact - Prospects and Progress" break out session, where he will present on the topic "How the UN Global Compact Can Transform the global CSR / Sustainability Movement".

For further information on this conference, go here.