In his most recent book, Excellence Now: Extreme Humanism, Tom Peters declares, “Excellence is, in an important way, spiritual.” He isn’t referring to “spiritual” in a religious sense but from how work relates to our inner selves. He continues to explain, saying, “Work is how we spend most of our waking hours, and it is, then by definition, ‘who we are.’”
As a senior leader, you are likely to be focused on business excellence. Tom Peters defines “business excellence” as being about “who we are and how we contribute, and therefore, a million miles beyond abstract balance sheets.”
Your Financials Don’t Motivate Your Employees
If you’re a leader who focuses first on the financials, you may be missing the point entirely. People are rarely motivated by their organization’s balance sheets and flash reports other than those whose incentive compensation and bonuses are tied to them. The average front-line worker doesn’t roll out of bed with enthusiasm to go to work according to a Gallup Poll research and other research about employee engagement, which in the U.S. as last measured pre-pandemic, hovered around a paltry 34%.
Connecting to Your Organization’s Higher Purpose Motivates Your Employees
But what has been repeatedly proven to result in excellence is connecting every person in an organization not only with a genuine mission, vision, and values but with a higher purpose. We’re fortunate to work with two CEOs who are not only on a business excellence journey but a performance excellence journey based on using the Baldrige Excellence Framework. We also heard the same thing from the 60+ executives of Baldrige Award recipients and Baldrige-based Award recipients from our interviews with them for our book, Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way: How World-Class Leaders Align Their Organizations to Deliver Exceptional Results.
Move From Poverty to Middle Class
The CEO of a unique non-profit organization, St. Louis’ Area Resources for Community and Human Services (ARCHS), Wendell E. Kimbrough has energized his small staff (less than 25 professional employees) with an aspirational statement, “The children served by our initiatives will move from poverty to middle class.”
Everyone Deserves a Healthy Smile
Our second CEO of another non-profit organization headquartered in Concord, New Hampshire, Northeast Delta Dental (NEDD), Tom Raffio, has coined an informal vision statement, “Everyone Deserves a Healthy Smile.” Can you see how concrete both of these purpose statements are at enabling every employee to see how what they do as individuals connects to the higher purpose of their organization? How empowering these purpose statements are at enabling employees to make the “right” decisions by judging the issue against its ability to contribute to the higher purpose?
We’ve worked with many award-winning organizations across a variety of industries, both for-profit and not-for-profit, and those who inspire us and their employees have taken the time to define a higher purpose. You might be surprised that a fast food company, K&N Management, created a vision of “to become world famous by delighting one guest at a time.” Tri-County Tech’s vision is “inspiring success through life-changing learning experiences” to help students in rural Oklahoma break out of a cycle of poverty. And Elevations Credit Union (a two-time Baldrige Award recipient) has a stated core purpose of “Together we create solutions for a better life.”
What’s your organization’s higher purpose?
Have you made it explicit and documented? Do you communicate it frequently? Is it part of your recruiting, hiring, and onboarding processes? Does it speak to your customers as well as your employees?
Please email me your organization’s higher purpose.
If you answered “no” to any of those questions, here’s just one more, “What are you waiting for?”
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News from the Baldrige Foundation, two upcoming webinars:
http://ow.ly/7sy650K3VsW
Aug 25, 2022 01:00 PM Eastern
Topic: Creating a Culture of Excellence
Operationalize culture by focusing on the process. We know how important organizational culture is to the lasting success of any organization. Few will question the importance of culture. More difficult is describing culture. Most difficult is transforming culture. This presentation is a collection of thoughts and shared best practices that have helped organizations in every sector achieve success in building strong organizational culture. Participants will follow a “Culture of Excellence 5 x 5 Process Map” as we walk through the presentation.
http://ow.ly/Cwav50K3VIb
2022 Baldrige Fall Conference
October 19-20th, 2022
At the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego