What is important?

How to Do a Baldrige Assessment

 

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Harry “The Baldrige Cheermudgeon”

Posted by Harry Hertz, the Baldrige Cheermudgeon

I am frequently asked about the elements of a Baldrige assessment, whether conducted as a self-assessment or externally conducted. The topic came up again during a discussion I was part of last week. In particular, what is the relationship among the various components of a Baldrige assessment.

Here is my simple explanation for the three major components:

1. The Organizational Profile (Category P in the Baldrige Criteria): This section is about what’s important to you. You describe your organization and its operating environment, key relationships, competitive environment, and strategic context.
2. The Baldrige Criteria (Categories 1-7) responses: This section is about how you are accomplishing what’s important to you. In a systematic fashion starting with leadership and ending with results, you describe how your organization does what’s important to you for successful enterprise management and sustainability.
3. The Scoring Guidelines: This section allows you to assess how well you are accomplishing what’s important to you. The scoring guidelines allow you to assess the maturity of your processes and their deployment, and the breadth and significance of the results you are achieving.

We always speak of a systems approach to organizational performance management. The full system is a combination of all three pieces. Without all three it would be neither holistic nor a system.

The most common incomplete use of the system is ignoring the Scoring Guidelines. They are the dimension that complements the seven categories of the Criteria. The Scoring Guidelines allow you to evaluate how mature your approaches are, how well you deploy them, how systematically you evaluate and improve them, and how successfully you align them with what’s important to you. For results, the Scoring Guidelines help you evaluate your current performance, your performance changes over time, how well your results compare with other organizations, and how successfully they address what’s important to you.

Sustainability requires knowing what you are doing (the criteria), how well you are doing it (the scoring guidelines), and how relevant it is to your needs (the organizational profile).

Organizations frequently and appropriately start with just the organizational profile, because you need to know who you are before you can add more detail. In a recent Blogrige interview with Lisa Muller from Jenks Public Schools, she describes the value of the organizational profile.
But once you know who you are, assessment requires the how (criteria responses) and the how well (scoring)!

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You can’t take anyone farther than you’ve taken yourself.

 You can’t take anyone farther than you’ve taken yourself - interesting statement I read in a recent article about another Baldrige award winner.  They say, "Assessing our processes, systems, and results against the Baldrige Criteria and Baldrige-worthy organizations continually sharpens our saw."

This is a service-based organization that has purposed to change its culture. They believe, "The history of successful organizational improvement journeys proves the need for organizational alignment, from the board to the front line. We believe these three key accelerants to alignment are vital prior to starting successful partnerships: (1) highest-ranking officers who are personally committed to steering the journey, (2) senior executives who hold leaders accountable for metric-based performance outcomes through a performance management and evaluation system, and (3) senior teams who provide their leaders with the skills needed to maximize their own potential by providing mandatory, quarterly leadership training."

Read the entire article here:

http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2014/03/27/changing-culture-insights-from-a-2010-baldrige-award-winner/

The pursuit of excellence is hard work. It takes time and dedication. We want all the organizations we work with to perform at their best, so we should want no less for our own organization. Thoughts?

Why Baldrige?

At a recent Baldrige conference one of the Excellence Award winners from an educational institution in Wisconsin answered the question - why did she choose to use Baldrige for her organization?

Here's text from her presentation:

She offered these answers to the question, Why Baldrige?

· “Because before we used [the Baldrige Criteria], we were hard-working, but now we’re more effective and efficient.”

· “Because [Baldrige] allowed us to leverage our strength in planning and get better to reach new heights of achievement.”

· “Because [Baldrige] allows us to make sure that we are using results to drive improvement.”

· “Because by using a systematic approach, we became more innovative.”

Any organization should aspire to be efficient, effective, improvement focused and innovative. I sure want IPS to be that type of organization!

Benchmarking IPS-like organizations

Are we entirely unique?

Sometimes we think IPS is so unique that we cannot benchmark our services and operation. Recently our counterparts at UNC Chapel Hill visited Georgia.  Although there are few one-to-one comparisons, a look at other universities work in government outreach can be enlightening.  Below is the link to School of Government Dean Mike Smith's blog post about the trip. See any similarities? Perhaps a group of IPSers should take a trip to Georgia (before the football game in the fall!)


http://mrs.sog.unc.edu/?p=3946&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=learning-from-the-vinson-institute-of-government

Baldrige Teams Hard at Work

Three of our seven Baldrige Teams have begun their work to re-write the applications due next summer. Please provide input to any team member.

Category One - Leadership - Mary Jinks (team lead), Kim Raia, Keith Groves, Don Green, Rick Whitehead.

Category Two - Strategic Planning - Steve Thompson (team lead), Robin Roberts, Bobby Phillips, Beth Phillips, Lori Ungurait, Frances Adams-O'Brien.

Category Three - Customer Focus -  Mike Garland (team lead), Rick Hall, Dan Miller, Dwaine Raper, Jennifer Benson, P.J. Snodgrass and Susan Robertson.

Categories one and two should be finished by the end of summer. Category three should be finished by early fall. Thanks to Chuck Shoopman for working with all the teams to bring focus and continuity to our efforts.

The Importance of Relationships

 

Harry Hertz, director of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Conference, is always insightful and the remarks he made following the recent natioanl conference made we think about how these principles apply to IPS.  Aren't we really about relationships?


Harry, says, "these are challenging times for all organizations. The unique blend of Baldrige Award recipients in 2012 (Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control—large manufacturing; MESA—small business/manufacturing; North Mississippi Health Services—large health care system; and the City of Irving, Texas— municipal government) allowed me to observe a set of commonalities that represent “universal truths” that are independent of sector. While the following two key themes were not necessarily stated directly in conference presentations, I found a profound commonality in the mindsets and operations of the very different enterprises.

• The importance of relationships and transparency: These two concepts are foundational to the sustainability of an organization or enterprise. Role-model organizations strive to build strong and supportive relationships with employees, customers, partners, and key suppliers. A key to building these strong relationships is transparency and openness in all aspects of the relationship. If transparency and relationships are strong, trust between people and organizations are built, and there is a basis for both longevity in the relationship and commitment to allegiance and support through periods of change.

• The logic chain of purpose → employee → customer → strategy (implementation): With a clear, meaningful, and well-communicated sense of purpose, an organization can gain an enduring sense of commitment from employees. That commitment leads to employees building strong customer relationships and loyalty. Furthermore, that loyalty from employees and customers engenders support at all levels in both groups for the organization’s strategy and its implementation. This is particularly important in times of rapidly changing external environments that require agility, trust, and commitment as strategy and, therefore, strategy implementation change."

Yes, I think this is the foundation for all we do in IPS.

Attributes of Good Measures

This is a portion of an article written by Harry Hertz from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. See the link at the end for the entire article.  As our Strategy Implementation Teams and our Baldrige application teams conduct their work, this information should be helpful.

Attributes of Good Measures

I believe there are nine key attributes of good measures, starting with the way results are scored in the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.

1. LeTCI (or let's see)—The acronym stands for levels, trends, comparisons, and integration. In the Baldrige scoring system, good measures must show the current level of performance on a meaningful scale. Good measures show how performance has trended over time on a time scale that is relevant to seeing changes in performance. Comparisons indicate how you are performing relative to key competitors, industry averages, and benchmark performance, as appropriate. Finally, integration demonstrates the extent to which your measures address important performance requirements and support organization-wide goals.

2. Measures should be comprehensive—They reflect a systematic approach to everything that is important to your organization's success. In the Baldrige results category, we look for product/service performance, customer-focused performance, operational performance (including workforce, leadership, and process performance, as well as ethical and legal compliance), and financial and marketplace performance.

3. Measures should be accurate and timely—Data are useless if they are inaccurate or not available soon enough to use them in decision making.

4. Measures should provide a basis for decision making—If the data and information are not informing decisions, you are probably not collecting the right information. Choice of top-level measures is critical, which is why it is the domain of senior leaders. A corollary to decision making is that key measures must also support decisions about resource allocation.

5. Measures should be strategic and operational—Measures need to address progress on strategic objectives and associated action plans. They also need to address ongoing operational performance. Measures need to address in-process performance, process output, and outcomes. Measures need to include leading and lagging indicators—those that predict future outcomes as well as those that track current performance.

6. Measures should be understandable—Users must be able to take action based on seeing the data. If the measures are very convoluted or abstract, they will not be useful.

7. Measures should be shared and cascaded—Data should be shared with your empowered workforce and suppliers and partners so that they can contribute to improvements and organizational success. Organizational-level measures should have counterpart or component measures at the business unit, divisional, and work unit levels. Measures can also cascade to individual employee scorecards.

8. Not all measures are numeric—Qualitative information is also important to an organization, including the perceptions of employees, customers, and your community. Qualitative information includes information on legal and regulatory compliance as well as financial audit performance.

9. Measures should be reassessed—Economic and competitive conditions change. Performance requirements change over time as well. Measures need to be scrutinized to see if a change is needed. If data are no longer providing any discriminating power between normal performance and outstanding performance, they need to be re-evaluated. While trend data are important, and speak to consistency in measures, you should not be locked in to no-longer-relevant measures.

What I learned from the Coast Guard

Of course I've never served in the Coast Guard, but I recently came across their PIG - Performance Improvement Guide. I was intrigued enough by the title to browse through part of the 170 page document. I was struck by how they talk about performance improvement:

"Leading-edge organizations use performance measurement and management systems to gain insight into, and make judgments about, the effectiveness and efficiency of their programs, processes, and people. Best-in-class organizations determine and use indicators to measure progress toward meeting strategic goals and objectives, gather and analyze performance data, and use the results to both drive improvements and successfully translate strategy into action."

 We have been collecting data for decades and we are beginning to use the data for better decision making. I look forward to our work together as we become a "best-in-class" organization.

Plates Still Spin but Senior Leaders Find Peace of Mind

As we continue our Baldrige journey it is encouraging to read about other organizations and the challenges they have faced using the Criteria to improve performance.

A recent post on the Baldrige Blog showcases Turner Broadcasting Systems' journey.  Paige Lillard, vice president of Business Excellence at Turner, made several interesting observations.

“What the framework does for senior leaders,” Lillard says, “is it takes the myriad issues and things on their minds, on their plates—the plates that they have to constantly keep spinning—customer needs, employee needs, and new technology changes—all of the pressures that without a systems approach are hard to keep straight in your head. The framework gives leaders the peace of mind that with their leadership team they have looked at multiple angles and have a realistic plan to achieve it. Even if a long-term plan is put into place, senior leaders can have the peace of mind that ‘we’re covered.’ [With the framework], we know we have a place to make changes, incorporate smart risk taking, and make situations better. Things have been thought of in a systematic way, and the people who work for them are on board. People know where they’re going. The framework offers senior leaders peace of mind. I certainly wouldn’t want to lead without it.”

Lillard says as a Criteria framework practitioner, she believes that it applies to every organization “because it’s all about humans and

• how humans work:
• how they lead,
• how they process information,
• how they want to have meaningful work,
• how they want to be part of things,
• how they want to see success.”

The Criteria encompass “human conditions no matter the culture,” she added. The Criteria’s focus on continuous improvement helps organizations “consider what’s around the corner . . . not resting on your laurels if you are doing well.”

Is you are interested in reading the entire blog, here is the link:

http://nistbaldrige.blogs.govdelivery.com/2013/01/08/plates-still-spin-but-senior-leaders-find-peace-of-mind/

Annual Performance Reviews

Supervisors are participating in training during the next few weeks to learn about the new forms for this year's process and how to conduct an effective annual review meeting. We have many experienced supervisors and a few new ones. These annual training programs are always a good refresher for those of us who have been doing this for a while.

As I discussed during my staff visits around the state, there should be no surprises during this meeting. Supervisors should already be aware of all your outstanding accomplishments of the year and you should already be aware if your supervisor has any concerns about your performance. This is merely an opportunity to document all of those in one place. The majority of the time should be spent developing and agreeing to your work plan for 2013.

I scan every performance review for every employee. I always enjoy learning about the exciting things that have occurred that for one reason or another I have not been aware of. I'm always impressed with the breadth and depth of our work and the strong relationships we have across the state.

We also track performance review ratings over time to look for rater consistency across each agency. Remember our starting point for every review is a "3". That assumes you are coming to work every day working your plan. It is your responsibility to document performance surpassing a "3" and it is the supervisor's responsibility to document performance below a "3." In the end, the agency director is responsible for ensuring that managers are evaluating employees fairly.

Once employee reviews are complete, agency directors have their reviews and once those are complete, the assistant vice presidents have their reviews. Ultimately, I will also have my review with the president. Like you, I am already pulling together documentation of my performance last year.

I hope the process goes smoothly for everyone. If you have any issues or concerns, please contact Judie Martin, the IPS human resource office.

Evidence that Baldrige Works

Below is a re-post from the Baldrige Blog.

Manufacturing Excellence: Guess What These Companies Have in Common?

Posted on September 11, 2012 by Dawn Bailey

Posted by Dawn Marie Bailey
“Can American Manufacturing Be Saved?” “U.S. Manufacturing: What Went Wrong?”

These are just two news headlines last week about the state of U.S. manufacturing. The news is not all bad, however; some manufacturing organizations are doing just fine. Check out the results below—all achieved by U.S. manufacturing companies in recent years. Can you guess what the companies have in common?

• Steady revenue growth from about $120 million to approximately $625 million over 12 years (MEDRAD; learn more here.)
• Overall scores measuring repeat sales and referrals consistently 60 percent or higher (MEDRAD;learn more here.)
• Best in the industry for its outstanding safety performance: recordable injury frequency rate 47 percent below the industry average; lost time injury frequency rate 45 percent below the industry average (MEDRAD; learn more here.)
• Overall customer satisfaction at or above 95 percent (Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC; learn more here.)
• Combined quality/reliability performance level at 99.9 percent for traditional customers (Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, LLC; learn more here.)
• Error-free delivery rate of 99 percent or above (Cargill Corn Milling; learn more here.)
• More than $15 million saved from ideas generated by employees (Cargill Corn Milling; learn more here.)
• Operational reliability effectiveness rate, a ratio between actual production and commercial demand, at 95 percent (Cargill Corn Milling; learn more here.)

These companies were guided by the leading-edge practices of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. Learn how your company can become more competitive, too. Get started here. “Baldrige-light” options are also available through a program near you.

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This entry was posted in Baldrige Award Process, Baldrige Criteria, Baldrige State & Local Programs, Manufacturing and tagged Alliance for Performance Excellence, Baldrige, Baldrige Criteria, Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, manufacturing. Bookmark the permalink.

 

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These examples provide evidence that Baldrige is working for manufacuturing. I'm anxious to see what results we might see in IPS!

Baldrige Site Visits

All four IPS agencies submitted Level Three Applications for the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence Baldrige Award. The process includes a two - day site visit and they are all coming up soon.

CTAS – site visit scheduled September 19-20. All the management team will be there plus Marty Spears who was on the committee.

 

MTAS – site visit scheduled September 25-26. Preparation was begun at the annual conference.  Margaret Norris and Josh Jones will be instrumental in the on-site visit. They are familiarizing staff with information.

 

CIS – site visit scheduled October 2-3. They have talked with all the team leaders about what is involved. Lynn Reed, Wendy Eddy, Andre Temple, and Dwaine Raper will be talking with staff.

 

LEIC – site visit October 24-25. Don Green, Mike Hill, Donna Kelley and Mandy Johnson will host and they are currently reviewing the application with staff.

 

Once the visits are complete the team will write a feedback report that each agency will receive in December. The feedback report is a valuable tool in helping us to understand how we can improve as an organization. I look forward to reading them.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

IPS has conducted biennial Customer Satisfaction Surveys since 1995. Each survey asks customers to evaluate our performance in five key areas: quality, level of effort, knowledge, timeliness, and usefulness.

The total survey results are posted on the Intranet. The highlights include:

69.7% of customers rated the quality of our service as excellent (compared to good, fair or poor).

59.2% rated the level of effort as extraordinary (compared to reasonable, minimal and none).

72.5% rated our personnel as very knowledgeable (compared to knowledgeable, somewhat knowledgeable or not knowledgeable).

52.2% rated the timeliness of the response as excellent (compared to good, fair or poor).

74.7% rated the usefulness of the information as a very decisive factor (compared to somewhat useful and not useful).

In addition to these five questions, each agency can ask its own relevant questions and we collect a series of demographic information that helps us segment our customers. With 16 years of trend data, we have plenty of information to help us improve.

Congratulations to all the staff who contribute to these great results. Keep up the outstanding work!

Can we use Baldrige?

I subscribe to the Baldrige Blog and this interesting piece recently appeared. Basically, two federal government agencies were trying to prove that Baldrige is a good fit for government. Here's a summary of their findings:

STRENGTHS
•The Criteria are time tested, and results are proven.
•Receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is a thrill for the workforce, and the workforce becomes even more engaged and committed to the agency and its mission, vision, and values.
•Organizations that adopt the Criteria become learning organizations.
•The feedback from applying for the Baldrige Award comes from the "world's best consultants" at an extremely nominal fee (less expensive than almost all management consulting).

WEAKNESSES
•There is an incorrect mindset that Baldrige does not apply to government agencies.
•It is hard to capture immediate return on investment.
•There are a lack of role models and benchmarking opportunities among nonprofits.
•Leaders often change in federal agencies, with different leaders valuing performance excellence and Baldrige differently from other leaders.

OPPORTUNITIES
•Great opportunities exist in the feedback received and the chance to stand out among agencies as being stewards for taxpayer money.
•The President or his delegate recognizes Baldrige Award recipients as national role models.
•The Baldrige Criteria force an agency to become data-driven and a quality organization.

THREATS
•Other federal agencies may become jealous when one agency receives this Presidential honor.
•You make yourself transparent (not necessarily a threat) and expose organizational weaknesses.
•Bureaucracies are not very good at sharing best practices.
•Money does need to be spent on benchmarking, and budgets can be cut.
•Some agencies say they are too busy (however, Umber said that once the agency becomes more efficient with Baldrige, you find more space).

Based on this business case, what do you think?

We are beginning the Baldrige process in IPS. I hope we see these outstanding results!

Performance Excellence

The Institute for Public Service is a sponsor of the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence (TNCPE) 2011 Excellence in Tennessee Conference to be held in Franklin on February 22-23.

TNCPE conducted the Baldrige Express survey for IPS in 2009 to help us improve our organization. Participants in the IPS Leadersihp Academy are also working on a clas project related to the Baldrige criteria. At the conference, national and regional experts and leaders from world-class organizations will provide training on best practices and improvement tools.

To learn more about TNCPE, or the Excellence in Tennessee Conference, please visit www.tncpe.org or call (800) 453-6474.

Conference details are available by clicking on the image above.

A sampling of sessions at the 2011 Excellence in Tennessee Conference include:
* Is Baldrige Your Answer to Healthcare Reform?
* Work Systems That Work: Your guide to successful process management
* Six Thinking Hats: An innovation tool for group discussion and parallel thinking
* Vision, Engagement and Strategy: The executive leader's role in continuous improvement
* Achieving 8 Dimensions of Excellence: A pragmatic approach that will strengthen your ability to achieve strategic outcomes

Consider this as possible professional development opportunity for this year and share with your customers as appropriate.

Guest Blog from Scott Gordy - Performance Measures

Performance Measures at the Institute for Public Service

For as long as I have been at the Institute for Public Service, almost 10 years now, “performance measures” has been a part of the vocabulary used within the Institute.

Having been personally involved with the collection and aggregation of performance measures for most of those years, it has been interesting to observe the transformation of this information in terms of how it is collected and reported.

Historically, it has been the responsibility of each agency to collect, aggregate, and distribute the performance information. Additionally, because of the need to report to stakeholders, such as state and federal legislators who fund our agencies, the information was typically broken down by Tennessee county into an Excel spreadsheet and returned to Central Office. This information was then, once again aggregated and consolidated for presentation to stakeholders with an interest in the Institute and all of its agencies.

Having said all this, the question remains “How is this information used?” I know this is a question posed by staff within the Institute because I have heard it posed by a number of my colleagues.

Furthermore, I would answer the question by saying it is used to describe the cause and work of the Institute to internal and external stakeholders. If you don’t believe me visit the IPS website at http://www.ips.tennessee.edu/ and click on the About Us link. In the right hand column you will find some quick links. Take some time look at the “Annual Reports” and look at the “Solutions for Your Community”.

The information contained therein is all comprised from the information that is gathered as a result of Performance Measures and the various Management Information Systems across the agencies.

What has been lacking until recently is a way to, in a timely manner, consolidate the information into a single repository in such a way that it is useful. Historically, consolidating the information happened once a year at the close of each fiscal year and there is a mad rush to get everything updated.

Sample Report for FY10, Loudon County

Now, the information contained within each of the respective MIS systems is uploaded once a month to a centralized repository. This fact has two primary advantages: 1) the information is available throughout the year for review and 2) less rush and stress to collect the information at the end of the fiscal year.
Also, with the MIS numeric data, project and activity descriptions are uploaded providing the additional information necessary for the Institute to send the message of our activities across the state and across the nation.

You have access to view the information throughout the year, and can see just how the work you do has an impact across the state and nation. Visit http://performance.ips.tennessee.edu/

What about MIS?

Would you throw out your MIS system if you could? Let me explain how I use it for the benefit of you and our customers.

Accountability is a buzz word in every work environment. How do we know we are achieving our mission? How can we show that we are giving the state and the university a good return on their investment in us?

We have struggled for more than a decade to determine how to best document what we do. We have settled on a variety of ways. First, we tell a lot of stories about your work. A good amount of the work we do cannot be reduced to numbers. For example, if you help a city with budget preparation or a county with a legal problem, we have not been able to determine the economic value of that assistance beyond how much it costs us to do it. So rather than reduce that type of work to numbers, we write anecdotal stories about your work and how it impacts the citizens we serve.

Second, we collect a lot of numbers! Your MIS data feed the IPS scorecard which feeds the UT scorecard. A system wide team is in the process of evaluating the scorecard data, but I don't anticipate it will change significantly. So, we do reduce a fair amount of the work we do to numbers. What was the economic impact of projects implemented? Were jobs created as a result? How many hours did participants spend in the classroom? Etc. Etc.

What else do we do with these data other than feed our scorecards? Every year each member of the board of trustees (who approves our budget and our salary plans) and the legislature (which allocates our appropriations) receives a personal statement of impact in the district he/she represents. We present the numbers and also a series of anecdotal stories. These are posted on our Internet site. Take a look at some samples if you've not seen them before.



We also use similar pieces in a variety of ways throughout the year to demonstrate the impact of the Institute for Public Service across the state. What you do matters. What you do is reported and what you do is appreciated by our stakeholders.

So, I'm not asking you to love your MIS systems. Maybe some of them can be improved and streamlined. But, I am asking you to feed them. The information is used in many, many ways and I want you to know that it is important.

More on Baldrige Express

Among the 175 pages of data we have the top five strengths and the top five opportunities for improvement.

Top 5 Strengths

*Performance measurement: selecting measures and collecting data to track daily operations and overall organizational performance

*Building a customer culture: ensure a consistently positive customer experience and contribute to customer engagement

*Workforce climate: provide benefits and services and create a safe, secure, and healthful work environment

*Strategy development process: developing strategic plans

*Vision, Values, and Mission: personally promoting a climate for legal and ethical behavior


Top 5 Opportunities for Improvement

*Analysis and use of customer data: determining customer groups and segments

*Emergency Readiness: preparing the work system and the workplace for emergencies and disasters

*Workforce Enrichment: performance management system to support high performance work and workforce engagement

*Vision, Values and Mission: sustaining the organization through innovation, learning, organizational agility, and developing leaders

*Communications and Organizational Performance: effectively communicating, engaging, and encouraging workers to take action to improve performance and create customer value

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The performance evaluation team will use these ten items as the jumping off point to start the plan for improvement. Thanks for all the feedback!

Baldrige Express Survey

Speaking of collecting a lot of stuff! The Baldrige Express Feedback report came in and it is 175 pages long! Chuck and I are trying to determine how to best digest this much information. Never fear, you'll get to read the entire report, if you choose. We'll be posting it on the Intranet very soon, but we are also looking for ways to present it in smaller chunks.


First, why did we conduct the survey? Our performance evaluation strategic planning team is helping us benchmark where we are and how we can improve using data. We aspire to be "the best in the business", so we decided to compare ourselves to the best in the business. Thanks to Chuck Shoopman, Bill Nusbaum, Mary Ann Moon, Nathan Lefebvre, Macel Ely and Lisa Shipley for leading this effort.

We had a phenomenal 78% response rate. That tells me that you really want to help us be a better organization. Thank you for taking the time to make it all the way through that long survey!



We had broad participation from across the institute including by position, location, headquarters and years of service:





Stayed tuned for more information on the results!

What do we do with all those data?

We (which mostly means you, the staff) collect a lot of stuff! Customer surveys, supervisor surveys, Baldrige survey, annual conference evaluations, training evaluations, APRs, not to mention all the MIS data! Ever wonder what we do with all that stuff?

I'm going to address these a few at a time over the coming weeks to help everyone better understand why we collect the information and some of the ways we use it - because there are many! Perhaps there are data elements that we are collecting "because we always have" that we need to reevaluate. When was the last time we stopped doing something?

Let me know if you have suggestions as we move along through this discussion.