Business Excellence (formerly Baldrige) New Zealand
It may be time for NZBEF to switch away from Baldrige
I have been honored to be part of the NZBEF and Baldrige Award programs from the start. It may surprise some to learn that in the beginning NZ was not certain whether to go with Baldrige or EFQM,. I was selected by NZ because I was experienced in both Baldrige and EFQM. This meant that if we started with Baldrige and wanted to switch to EFQM, NZ could continue use me as a strategist, advocate, and evaluator trainer. Times have changed.
Baldrige has fallen out of favor internationally based on my work with more than 30+ national business excellence awards in the past 5 years . . . EFQM is now used by three times the number of countries as as Baldrige . . . and Baldrige continues to decline rapidly . . . and now a 2015 independent study of award programs from more than 60 nations confirms my findings
Has the Baldrige Award gone out of business?
For the first time in the 27 year history of the award,
there were no 2013 Baldrige
business applicants including no manufacturing, service or
small business applicants
and Criteria
degradation and impracticality are looking more and more
like the primary causes
Why Baldrige has failed: Criteria flaws and practicality-adverse complexity have long been cited as major reasons for the sharp prolonged decline of business participation.
Breaking BADrige . . . this news is not so good for Baldrige
Business excellence tools and resources for New Zealand from the most experienced source
Top this!
Vodafone was my 11th telecommunications client in 11 different countries. I am pleased to report that all eleven achieved their project objectives . . . which for most of them was to win their 2013 national quality/excellence award . . . thank you Vodafone for keeping the streak alive . . . and, thank you for the special honor of inviting me to work with a truly outstanding organization that never stops improving . . . and it all started with Telecom New Zealand!
2013 Asian Productivity Organization (APO) Quality Awards for Practitioners Workshop with 17 Asian Nations Represented
Honored and pleased immensely to serve as APO Technical Expert to this critically important workshop (23-27 September 2013 Bangkok)
2012, 2013 and 2014 FIJI National Evaluator Training
I am especially grateful to Fiji National University National Training and Productivity Centre (NTPC) and to Public Service Commission (Office of the Prime Minister) for inviting me to train the Fiji Business Excellence Award Evaluators and the government's Service Excellence Award (SEA) Evaluators during May and June of this year. This is the only government that I am aware of that is using the Baldrige Criteria to assess and improve every Ministry, Agency, and Department including the Office of the Prime Minister and the Office of the President.
2012 Fiji Business Excellence Award Evaluators 2012 Fiji Service Excellence Award Evaluators
It does not get any better than being selected to guide the development of the Asian Productivity Organization's manual to train the Business Excellence Consultants in most Asian nations including members from Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Fiji, Taiwan, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.
MISSION: Accelerating organizational improvement beyond the capabilities of all the Business Excellence approaches combined. Paul Steel
Baldrige-based improvement accelerated and made practical from the most experienced source
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New Zealand's Baldrige-Based History of Excellence
The current New Zealand Business Excellence Award began in 1993 as the New Zealand National Quality Award (NZNQA It is now NZBEF (New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation - NZBEF) under the vision and steadfast support of Commerce and Immigration Minister Roger Maxwell. Minister Maxwell had observed the success and popularity of the Baldrige Award in the United States after it was launched in 1988. He also observed that the Europeans had launched the European Quality Award (EQA) in 1992 and that it was overwhelmingly popular. Both awards focused on achieving 'world-class' excellence and national competitiveness. These concepts appealed to New Zealand because of its remote geographical location and dependency on international trade. The top leaders of many of the largest businesses eagerly stepped forward to support the endeavor with genuine enthusiasm directed at improving both individual and national competitiveness. A search for someone to guide and train them led to me. When they learned that I was a Senior Baldrige Examiner from the beginning of the Award and that I had also served as consultant to Xerox of Europe which won the first European Quality Award, I was selected. At the time, there was some debate as to whether to use the Baldrige or the European Criteria. Selecting me gave New Zealand the option of switching which none of my competitors could match. These were exciting days with a 'Who's Who' of government and business leaders wanting to be visibly involved and a group of distinguished quality leaders from a wide variety of organizations.
Minister Roger Maxwell (far right), Errol Slyfield (far left) and Paul Steel (3rd from right) at launch of the first Business Development Quality Awards (BDQA) in 1994
The key people leading New Zealand's program included Doug Matteson (Chairman), Wayne Squires (Executive Director), and Errol Slyfield who served as deputy to Minister Maxwell in this capacity. Doug was strong in strategic planning and I remember him huddling with Wayne and I in a small conference room at the Waipuna Resort where we developed the original plan. Little did I know that this would lead to dozens more visits to New Zealand with my wife accompanying me on many.
In 1994, the Business Development Quality Award was launched in part to offer an easier version of the award process that would encourage smaller organizations to participate. this was vital due to the relative size of NZ businesses in relation to Australia and other large nations they compete with.
Photos from the first years and mid years of
NZNQA/NZBEF Assessor training
The Baldrige Model - from the perspective of its systems and processes
Each process in the Total Baldrige Integrated Excellence System is actually a core process that has been updated using knowledge gained from hundreds of assessments of public and private sector and health care and education Criteria users worldwide. These core processes are the 'best of the best'. However, the best processes in the world are useless unless you and your colleagues can accept and implement them. I have 30 years of experience in facilitating implementation of processes and systems while preserving the culture and special needs of various sizes and types of organizations. It is much easier to do than most people think. The key to success is to replace the core of your existing processes which are not capable of best-in-class performance with a best practice core processes. This allows you to preserve everything that works well, everything important to your success, your culture, and everything you are already the expert in.
The core process approach enables organizations to accelerate their overall rate of improvement beyond today's continuous improvement and Business Excellence approaches.
Replacing incapable core processes with highly capable ones causes a shift in your improvement rate from gradual to breakthrough. I can do this for you for any process or system in the graphic or I can teach you how to do it. Please contact me and I will be pleased to discuss this with you and/or visit with you.
2009 saw Kevin Riley become first Baldrige Foreign Examiner from NZBEF. It was great to reunite with Kevin at NIST after all these years since he hired me to consult Telecom NZ Yellow Pages - so many years ago.
2009 Baldrige Examiner Training: Kevin Riley is shown with Dr. Harry Hertz, head of Indian Quality Award and myself (1st photo) and with Dr. Curt Reimann (Father of Baldrige Award) in 2nd photo
The Baldrige, EFQM, Australian, Singapore and other national excellence Criteria have opened up the world to me and have allowed me to enjoy visiting and learning about many cultures. Working with many of the best organizations in these great places has allowed me to learn how much about how they have achieved world-class excellence. This webpage celebrates these wonderful experiences with photos and more importantly shares what I have learned from assessing hundreds of organizations in more than 30 countries for over 20 years and also from working with quality gurus Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Armand (Val) Feigenbaum for seven years. Paul Steel
Baldrige Training → Thousands more people trained in Self-Assessment than the Baldrige Award Program! - Click to learn more
Dr. Robin Mann and Paul Steel reminisce and discuss best practice integration strategy in Tehran and Singapore
Enjoy the photos from organizations in some of the more than 30 countries that have invited me to contribute to their pursuit of excellence
Baldrige Excellence international - work and photo links |
Asia |
Middle East |
Europe |
Latin America |
Australasia |
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Jordan |
Belgium |
Costa Rica |
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Germany |
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Ireland |
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Netherlands |
North America |
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Eurasia |
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