After the recent Oscars® Award ceremony, I thought about some of the similarities between many of the Hollywood actors and those organizations that are recipients of multiple Baldrige Awards. The actors and others who are nominated and even those who win the award don’t seem to rest on their laurels or stop striving to stay at the top of their game. They continue to demonstrate the mastery of their craft in new roles, related skills, and new productions. They also have a passion for continuing to demonstrate excellence and being recognized for their accomplishments.
If winning the Baldrige Award once were sufficiently rewarding, what would persuade these multiple award recipients to continue? I’ll offer a little food for thought. You can decide if any of these apply to you and your organization.
1. There isn’t an equivalent standard of performance excellence that rivals the richness, integration, and holistic approach of the Baldrige Excellence Framework. And certainly not one that continues to be evaluated and improved over time, refreshed with validated, leading-edge concepts and management best practices.
2. Workforces continue to change as employees retire or leave and new employees join organizations. What better approach to ensure the reinforcement of the culture you’ve tried to build and the maintenance of your precious knowledge assets than to create a common vocabulary and a shared understanding of how work gets done.
3. Customers’ expectations continue to evolve and escalate. Your competitors of today are constantly being tested by other experiences your customers have, even – or especially – outside of your industry. Speed of response, resolution, and gratification of “wants” continue to accelerate in various settings, which further leads your customers to have similar expectations of you and your organization.
If you haven’t already applied for a Baldrige or Baldrige-based award, what’s stopping you? There is never a “right” time. [insert Sister’s quote] The objective, thoughtful feedback you’ll receive will be one of the best returns on investment you’ll ever make. And if you’ve already received Baldrige-based recognition (from the national program or one of the Alliance programs), isn’t it time to test your organization again for continuing the journey of increasing performance excellence?
Take a look at lessons to be learned from the 2021 Baldrige Award recipients. https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/
And from the Alliance
* “Charting the Course: Leading Forward” PENworks 2022 Conference May 12-13, 2022 https://www.