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?