Our Journey to Baldrige
Sara Potterfield
Potterfield Group Vice President-Public
Relations
Why did we start this journey?
• Can you see the future?
• We had good performance
• Needed great sustainability of performance
Our First Attempt
• A TQM Expert lead our first attempt in 1996
• Wrote the application with some collaboration
• Administered a few surveys, Customer and
employee
• We lacked the systematic process to change
anything
Our Second Attempt
• Our second attempt was a unified front
• Baldrige Fall 2004
– We read every question and answered it
– We went back and answered it again and again
– We finally wrote the “how our business should be
run” application
Our Second Attempt
• Our Baldrige Application
– We reviewed the application for gaps
– We fixed the gaps – implemented many new
processes
– Applied for and received the Missouri Quality Award
in 2008
– Applied for and received the Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award in 2009
What did we learn?
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It is really easy to miss the word “How”
Figure out what the questions were asking
Expect 3 solid years of hard work
Must make improvements every day
Goals must be measureable
Mission Statement is central
What worked well?
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Support from the top
The entire SLT wrote the application
30% of our salaried staff as examiners
Dedicated time off site to work
Our culture of learning
Deployment throughout the organization
Celebrating victories
What worked well?
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Start writing the application early
Everyone must understand criteria
Code of Conduct
Master Planning Calendar
Capacity planning
Look for Approach, Deployment, Learning and
Integration
What key things changed?
• The level of service that we are able to offer
the Customer
• Our ability to focus
• The language we all speak
• The integration between departments
• “…but is that systematic?”
• The quality of our staff
• Identification and focus on key results
What key things changed?
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Our ability to segment our data
Our Customer Listening Posts
Many paradigm shifts
Communication to all levels improved
We know what processes are being performed
Documentation and training
Common strategic objectives
Benchmarks help us improve
Questions?
Thank you!
Our best wishes to you in your
pursuit of performance excellence!
For more information:
www.AmericaNeedsBaldrige.com
qms@midwayusa.com