Sustainability Mission EFQM Forum 2011

Next week the EFQM Forum 2011 will take place. On 25 & 26 October the Crème-de-la-Crème of the EFQM Community will gather at the distinctive futuristic BMW Welt conference center in Munich, Germany. Finally the EFQM members (and also other interested parties) will be discussing the topic “Taking Responsibility for a Sustainable Future”, as our annual Forum will be centred round the theme “People, Planet, Profit”!

Must admit I am very happy to finally have my favourite Fundamental Concept on the menu. And as far as I am concerned this is long overdue too.

Let me provide you with evidence J. The graph below shows the scoring per Criterion of the EFQM Excellence Award applicants 2007 to 2010. Here you can see that Criterion 8 Social Results scores lowest of them all. The graph shows the average scores and highest scores per Criterion. The highest score is for Criterion 9 Key Results with 90 points. The highest score for Social Results does not get above 73 points. On the averages all criterion score between 58 to 62 points, except again Social Results, the average for this Criterion is only 45 points! 

Now without proper investigation and analysis we can only speculate on the causes behind this phenomenon. Might it be the EFQM Model itself where we could find some answers and areas for improvement? Or maybe we should look for something in the assessment-approach? Maybe it is the level of awareness around all that is connected to sustainability that still needs to find a critical mass in our EFQM Community?

These are all questions I am walking around with. I will take up the opportunity to approach one or more representatives of applicant organisations that participated in the EEA this year to review and reflect with them on this matter. Possibly I might even tackle some people from the organisation winning the EEA Award this year and see what they think!

Although I am not without purpose much, I suppose I will be a woman with a ‘sustainability mission’ at the EFQM Forum this year. Please beware!

J2E gets you going!

The EFQM Model is not for wimps. One needs to persist and invest time and effort to improve the performance and the organisation in a sustainable way. It is great when things (and obviously the business results) start going your way! Finding the way to get started is sometimes a challenge … this is where the EFQM Journey to Excellence (J2E) training course will get you off to an even better start.

When it comes to successfully implementing the EFQM Model in an organisation everyone throughout the organisation needs to be involved and fully engaged. Line managers and process owners don’t need the same level of understanding of the EFQM Model as the excellence professionals in the organisation need to have. What these line managers and process owners need to understand is simply how to apply the Model in a practical and common sense way with simple tools and techniques. This is what will add value to the workplace. The J2E-course is specially designed for line managers and process owners who are going to support the organisation with implementing the Model. The J2E-course is a 3-day interactive training course created to help attendees understand where they are on their journey towards excellence, where they would like to be and how to get there. At the end of the course, they will be more motivated and will better appreciate what is required to set out on the journey, not just in terms of tools and techniques, but also in terms of cultural development.

Will you win?

Last October BBest launched the first Excellence Award program in the Benelux based on an evaluation with the EFQM Model. The Benelux Excellence Award is an official part of the EFQM Excellence Award program and as such the ideal ‘try out’ opportunity for organisations planning to go for the EFQM Excellence Award. The goal of the BEA-program is to identify organisations that have made considerable progress on their ‘Journey towards Excellence’ and recognise these organisations with an award, the Benelux Excellence Award.

Any company, organisation or operational unit in Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg can enter into the BEA-program regardless of their size and sector of activities (public, private or not-for-profit). Applicants will be requested to prepare a submission document as preparation for the assessment team. The actual performance of the applicant will be evaluated through a ‘Recognised for Excellence’ type of assessment with the EFQM Model. A small team of experts will execute this assessment. All applicants will receive an assessment feedback report detailing their strengths and areas for improvement. Also a score on the achieved level of Excellence at that time will be provided. However to have a ‘fighting chance’ to actually win the award please be aware of the fact that is it expected that applicants have a mature quality management system in place already for some time. The management system should either based on ISO or a sector specific quality system derived from the EFQM Model, or obviously directly based on the EFQM Model itself.

Candidate organisations for the Benelux Excellence Award 2011 can contact BBest directly to enrol into the program and need to keep in mind that they should also be able to have the EFQM-assessment done ultimately by September this year.

An award will be presented to the company or organisation that has been rated to be the best in his category:

Not-for-profit – small organisations

Not-for-profit – big organisations

Profit – small organisations

Profit – big organisations

In October 2011 during the next annual BBest conference the awards will be presented. Will we be handing this beautiful award to you maybe? Hope so!

Don’t miss my article in magazine Kwaliteit in Bedrijf, a renowned Dutch quality magazine. The magazine will publish my Business Excellence Award article in their March issue.

Let’s take a look in the mirror

Previously I talked about the use of the EFQM Model in the context of an EFQM-assessment. But the EFQM Model can also be used as a model for management to run their business. Through a process called Self-Assessment (SA) an organisation can get a comprehensive view on their overall fitness at a certain point in time. It is actually not much more than taking ‘a good look in the mirror’ called EFQM Model. What you see provides you with feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of all the approaches the organisation. This feedback is invaluable when determining or refining the future strategic direction of the organisation and consequently identifying the necessary improvements to make it happen.

Depending on the method used for executing the SA the investment in resources will vary. Regardless of the method used the result of the process is a list of the organisation’s Strengths (Ss) and Areas For Improvement (AFIs). It is not uncommon for an organisation to identify more than 200 items, nor is it uncommon that several and/or the big ‘challenges’ on the list were already on the radar of the senior management team.

There are managers (and consultants) who are disappointed with this process, because they feel there is an imbalance between the input and the output of the process. The (sometimes big) investment in resources does not make up for creating this very long list of Ss and AFIs, many ‘they knew about anyway’… One can look upon this point in various ways, but let me bring up a few things I find important to mention on this point. 

Firstly I sincerely hope the identified Ss and AFIs do not come as a surprise to management, at least not the majority of them, otherwise they would have been quite out of touch with their own business. However I do agree that listing all these detailed Ss and AFIs, as this is a part of the process, is not the most exiting activity. EFQM has various support tools available, but a good help here is the solution Ricoh has offered to the EFQM Community recently. To support their SA-process Ricoh developed and implemented a SA-method and tool called the Business Excellence Matrix (BEM). Apart from identifying and creating the list of Ss and AFIs, the output of BEM-approach is also an Enabler Map.

Secondly, but maybe I should have mentioned this first, the creation of this comprehensive list of Ss and AFIs is not an aim in itself. This list is the basis from which the organisation selects the priority topics that will help to define or refine their strategy and make sure the organisation is progressing towards reaching its vision.

And thirdly when the SA-process is set up and executed the right way it creates an enormous buzz in the organisation. Involving people from various levels in the organisation creates a feeling of empowerment among employees. In my personal experience people that have been involved in a Self-Assessment do not need much encouragement to take ownership of any action or project agreed as a result of that process. This makes deployment quite a bit easier!

I can put more points forward, but I leave it up to you now to maybe surprise me with one or two interesting things about your own the Self-Assessment experiences. What surprised you when you took a good look in the EFQM Model mirror?

EAT in Abu Dhabi!

In January I visited the Middle East for the first time in my life. Everywhere in Europe it was snowy and cold, but I traveled to the best of climates: warm and sunny about 25 degrees Celsius. Just perfect! As a member of the EFQM faculty of trainers I was requested to visit Abu Dhabi and to support the new partner there with introducing the assessed-version of the EFQM Assessor Training course. This partner is the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award (SKEA) organisation and is the latest addition to local partnerships of the EFQM in the Middle East.

SKEA has been running the local excellence award program in Abu Dhabi for some years now. Although it has been running successfully they wanted to take their award program to the next level. From the beginning the program has been based on the EFQM Excellence Model and the assessment procedures have been similar to those of the EFQM Excellence Award. This includes an award ceremony concluding the cycle for the year. During the ceremony the Sheikh personally gives out a Diamond, a Gold and a Silver Award to the organisations that proved to be the best in Abu Dhabi. The next level for SKEA means running the award program based on the EFQM 2010 Model and the next SKEA award cycle will be based on it. After the summer the 2011 award assessments will take place and for the members of the Abu Dhabi assessor pool to be ready they are provided with additional EFQM Assessor Training. 

I was very happy to support the local trainers, Hadi Eltigani and Tony Bendell, with training the first group of local assessors according to the assessed version of the EFQM Assessor Training course. The people selected and asked to participate in the first course are considered to be the best-of-the-best of the assessor pool in Abu Dhabi and without exception this proved to be true. They evidenced to be skilled in performing assessment procedures and were eager to learn about the EFQM way of working during the training course. This has been my most enjoyable EAT course so far. I have made some great new friends and I wish Waheeda, Doaa, Aline, Abdulqadar, Grant, Srijayan, Kanak, Rachid and Mahmoud good luck and good fun with their next award assessment job! 

To Google or not to Google that is the question!

We all search a lot on the Internet. How much do you Google a day?

The Internet has given society a world where we do not need to travel so much or look too long for the information we need. This saves us a lot of energy, but using the Internet also consumes energy…

A German professor calculated that one search through Google would also make an energy-efficient lamp burn for one hour! Google says that this is not true. Although they don’t want to say how much energy their (over a million) computers use, they do admit it is a lot. It is estimated they use as much energy as a small European country. 

As part of their Google Green initiatives the company invests in clean energy (read renewable) solutions. The Google Green program builds on the following pillars: operations, products, and investments next to creating awareness regarding the use of renewable energy.

Not all things that I search for on the Internet are always significant or necessary. It sometimes is just a nice diversion. That is why my New Year’s resolution is to be more ‘energy aware’ and to think before I search on the Internet. To Google or not to Google that is the question for me this year!

I wish you all a happy New Year!