You have been a Baldrige Examiner for unprecedented 12 years. Based on that, what are your observations and insights about performance management? What have been the major changes over the years?
What I like about the Malcolm Baldrige award, [since] it was first introduced in 1988 I believe, is that it has evolved over time. So actually applying the basic fundamentals that the Baldrige criteria embrace, has also been used to improve the program. So it has evolved over time as the environment and industry has evolved. For example, when the criteria (the Baldrige award) first came out, it was very heavily focused on statistical process control and on process and process performance. And even being somewhat “prescriptive,” if that’s what you want to call it (although the criteria is not prescriptive), but [it is] a prescriptive route to technical processes you want to focus on, like supplier management. So the criteria would ask about the supplier management process. In today’s environment many organizations outsource a lot of the non-core processes, and so it really becomes an issue of how you manage those processes that aren’t necessarily within your control, not necessarily supplier management. There is also an evolution of a stronger focus on results, but not just on results for results’ sake, but how those results were derived throughout the organization, on a balanced view or balanced portfolio of results within the organization. [There is] some shift relative to leadership, so you take into consideration situations that occurred throughout the world related to ethics – think Enron. And so now the leadership system places a stronger emphasis in terms of understanding how companies perform ethically and how they guarantee that senior leaders and their employees and processes produce ethical results, with a high degree of integrity through the organization. So the evolution over time has been a little bit more focused on results, but results for the right reasons, and more of a balanced portfolio of results. [The award has] allowed to take into consideration changes in the environment, like ethics.