An earlier post on this blog asked readers to examine the question, What attributes are associated with high performing correctional organizations? Now we add the question, How does one define and, more importantly, measure them?
While not a perfect fit, a possible model for answering these questions can be found in the Baldrige National Quality Program. This program is sponsored by The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The mission of the Baldrige program is to promote excellence and to improve the economic strength and competitiveness of U.S. businesses and organizations. Any small or medium sized organization (public or private) can apply to participate.
Rather than “reinvent the wheel” corrections agencies could utilize national and/or local Baldrige program criteria as a way to define, articulate, and measure themselves and create customized action plans to highlight their current strengths and reach even higher levels of functioning.
History
The Baldrige National Quality Program was established in 1987 under the “Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987.” Today nearly 40 states have created counterpart programs. Originally, only three categories existed: manufacturing, small business, and service. In 1999, categories for education and health care were added. Finally, in 2007, a nonprofit category was added as well.
The National Baldrige Program bestows up to 18 awards each year across these six categories. Award winners are obligated to “give back” by sharing nonproprietary information with future applicants, participating in conferences, providing examiners for the following year, and hosting workshops. There are multiple beneficiaries to the process beyond the organization itself, including customers, stakeholders, other organizations, and the country as a whole.
While corrections organizations have unique responsibilities and functions compared to these other fields, the Baldrige program provides a well-researched and validated template for exploring ways to improve organizational functioning.
The Process
The program is a self-assessment process based on clearly articulated Criteria. The Baldrige Criteria embody a systems perspective, and represent validated and proven management practices that work in today’s dynamic environment. These criteria are embedded in the beliefs, values and behaviors of high-performing organizations including: visionary leadership; customer-driven excellence; organizational and personal learning; valuing workforce members and partners; agility; focus on the future; managing for innovation; management by fact; social responsibility; and focus on results.
The Criteria are categorized as follows:
The Leadership Triad:
1. Leadership
2. Strategic Planning
3. Customer Focus
4. Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
The Results Triad
5. Workforce Focus
6. Process Management
7. Results
Each category has specific, detailed questions that must be addressed during the self-assessment process. All key terms and phrases are operationally defined. Examples of questions from each cateogory include:
Leadership:
• Describe how senior leaders’ actions guide and sustain your organization.
• Describe how senior leaders communicate with your workforce and encourage high performance.
• How do senior leaders create sustainable organizations?
• How do they develop and enhance their personal leadership skills?
• How do they participate in organizational learning, in succession planning, and in the development of future organizational leaders?
Strategic Planning:
• Describe how your organization establishes its strategy to address its strategic challenges and leverage its strategic advantages.
• What are your key strategic objectives and your timetable for accomplishing them?
Customer Focus:
• How do you create an organizational culture that ensures a consistently positive customer experience and contributes to customer engagement?
Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management:
• Describe how your organization measures, analyzes, reviews, and improves its performance through the use of data and information at all levels and in all parts of your organization.
• How do you translate organizational performance review findings into priorities for continuous and breakthrough improvement and into opportunities for innovation?
Workforce Focus:
• Describe how your organization engages, compensates, and rewards your workforce to achieve high performance.
• How does your workforce performance management system support high-performance work and workforce engagement?
• How do you assess workforce engagement?
Process Management:
• How do you design and innovate your overall work systems?
• How do you ensure work system and workplace preparedness for disasters or emergencies?
• How does your disaster and emergency preparedness system consider prevention, management, continuity of operations, and recovery?
Results:
• What are your current levels and trends in key measures or indicators of financial performance, including aggregate measures of financial return, financial viability, or budgetary performance, as appropriate?
• What are your current levels and trends in key measures or indicators of your workforce climate, including workforce health, safety, and security and workforce services and benefits, as appropriate?
Applying for the Award is considered a final step in a multi-tiered process, and many of these ”preliminary” steps can be beneficial for any organization, regardless of whether or not they receive an award. The preliminary steps in this process include:
- Completing two questionnaires: Are We Making Progress? and Are We Making Progress as Leaders? These offer an introduction to the seven criteria Categories, and give a snapshot of the organization’s current strengths and opportunities for improvement.
- Completing the easy-Insight (formally known as e-Baldrige) assessment tool. This evaluates the following areas: Organizational Description (Organizational Environment, Organizational Relationships); Organizational Challenges (Competitive Environment, Strategic Context).
- Writing an organizational profile. This asks detailed, open-ended questions from the same categories included in the easy-Insight assessment.
- Conducting a full self-assessment. There are six basic steps to this process:
- Identify whether the whole organization, or a specific part of it, will be assessed.
- Selecting exemplary personnel (aka champions) for each of the Baldrige Categories to participate in responding to the item questions in their Category.
- Champions select Category teams, which collect information and data for responding to the Criteria questions in their respective Categories.
- Category teams share their answers to their Criteria questions with other Category teams.
- Each Category team creates and communicates an action plan for improvement based on their answers and organizational priorities.
- In the final step in the process, senior leaders, champions, and teams evaluate what has been done and think about ways to improve the self-assessment process in the future.
Applying for the Award involves a time commitment that is estimated at 100 hours, which does not include the afore-mentioned preliminary steps. Then, applications are reviewed by a team of examiners. At least six members of the team conduct independent and consensus reviews. If an organization scores well on the reviews, site visits are conducted. Finally, judges review and make award recommendations. Every applicant receives a detailed feedback report. This report is considered one of the most important aspects of the Baldrige Award process, as it stresses how organizations can improve.
Get Involved
If you are interested in participating in this aspect of the HPCO project, we would like to invite you to subscribe to this blog, post comments about the information we share, suggest ideas for the project, and ask questions. Specifically…
- What components of the Baldrige process could easily translate to corrections?
- Which criteria domains make sense for corrections and which domains are too business-oriented?
- What is missing from the Baldrige process and/or criteria?
- Who is the customer in corrections?
- What is a reasonable time commitment for a self-assessment process?
If you would like to read the 3 reports summarized in this post: Getting Started with the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, Criteria for Performance Excellence, and Baldrige Award Application Forms - they are available at no-cost at: Baldrige Website
Additional contact info:
Baldrige National Quality Program
NIST
Administration Building, Room A600
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 1020
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-1020
Telephone: (301) 975-2036
Fax: (301) 948-3716
E-mail: nqp@nist.gov