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 internationallybased 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. Those are valid criticisms but now a new and stronger reason for Criteria
rejection has emerged. New research comparing the Criteria when they were
extremely popular with businesses to today’s Criteria which has a near 100%
rejection rate show stark contrasts in relation to how businesses think and how
Baldrige thinks. Baldrige has significantly reduced its assessment scoring in
the current Criteria for areas important to businesses
(e.g., products and services, processes and systems, and
cost management) since it was wildly popular with businesses
. . . more than 20 years ago.
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 the total organizational improvement
rate beyond the capabilities of all Business
Excellence approaches combined. Paul
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
