CEOs Speak Out on Powerful Lessons Learned

CEOs Speak Out on Powerful
Lessons Learned

The Value is in the Journey… Not the Win

We just submitted our first Baldrige application in May. If we win the Baldrige someday, that would be huge, but my real interest is in the value of the journey. Already it has helped us clearly define key gaps, confirmed our direction and leadership framework and provided strategic directionand clarity to achieve our vision.

I think whenever an organization applies for an award, it engages and focuses employees on achieving results. For example, when we applied and won the award from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), our human resources department aligned to Criteria that helped make us a great workplace for older employees. As a result, turnover is down 6.1%. In winning Solucient, we had to provide cost-efficient service and this allowed us to learn more about our costefficiency. Baldrige is great because it is all encompassing. Rather than a focus on a specific component, it balances our progress and success across all components...just like Studer Group's Five Pillars.

Advice to other organizations? Be sure you are truly ready to take the risk before you move forward with any award criteria. The risk is that you will really engage employees, which is excellent if you are ready to risk making real changes. Otherwise, don't begin because it's not good for employees...it will only lead to frustration and disappointment.

Michael S. Eesley, President & CEO, Centegra, Woodstock, IL

Take It in Stages

We have applied twice at the state level (awarded a bronze, then a silver) and are now applying at the national level as well as the state level. The Baldrige process is all part of our journey to create the very best health care system we can. Each year we ask ourselves if the commitment of time and resources to Baldrige makes us a better organization and each year we have concluded that we continue to benefit greatly.

Without clear input from this very formalized process, I don't think we would have been able to gather the impetus organization wide to make the progress we have.

However, it's important to understand there's a steep learning curve at the beginning. It requires engaged and committed leaders. In fact, our senior leaders are the people writing the Categories in the application that apply to their functions. I also think that successful organizations are those that understand the benefit of having staff who recognize the Criteria through examiner training. One of the lessons we learned:

Organizations are more likely to achieve a site visit and thereby get expert feedback, by applying first to their state-level quality awards before applying at the national level. We were advised that the site visit Criteria (application score) is lower at the state level, which means more organizations that apply there will get that valuable site visit feedback and can better gauge when they feel prepared for the national application.

Michael W. Murphy, President & CEO, Sharp HealthCare, San Diego, CA


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The Baldrige Award:
What’s In It for Me?
> June 29

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