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Tag Archives: Baldridge

Leadership System and the Open Door Policy

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by Dan Edds in Leadership System Rules, Leadership Systems, Praxis Solutions

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Baldridge, Leadership Systems

Leadership Systems - Open Door Policy

An open door policy is a nice value. It only becomes part of a leadership system if it is built into the rules of the system.

Inc Magazine recently republished an article by Gary Vaynerchuk titled: Why My Door is Always Open. According to his LinkedIn page, Gary is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of VaynerMedia, a full-service digital agency servicing Fortune 500 clients across the company’s 4 locations. He is also a sought after public speaker, a venture capitalist, 4-time New York Times bestselling author, and an early investor in companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo and Uber.

In his article, which is really rather good, Gary speaks to the value of the CEO having an open-door policy. As I read the article I was struck with the dichotomy of my last CEO. His personal leadership skills, in many ways was off the charts. He was smart, respectful, engaging, passionate, and visionary. His understanding of leadership as a system was awful. In contrast to Mr. Vasynerchuk, he would arrive in the morning, immediately go into his office, shut the door, pull the internal window blinds and not come out until after lunch. Consequently, all but one of the senior leaders would do the same. As a senior project manager, I knew within days of starting that my time with his firm would short. The unspoken rule was, you don’t bother the CEO until after lunch and he opened his door. His other leaders just followed his lead. Team work and collaboration, two things desperately needed in a consulting business, was non-existent. While the senior leaders had been stable, the rest of the firm was a revolving door of smart people coming and going. When the COO called me after my resignation and ask why, I told her. Her response was why didn’t you say something? Really?

While an open-door policy is a nice touch for a CEO, it only turns into a system if her leaders and managers do the same. It must be built into the rules of the system and not just a value of the CEO. Contrast this to a small regional hospital in Western Washington. This CEO understands leadership as a system and in designing the system, one of the requirements is… all leaders will have an open-door policy. I have never seen an organization with greater team work and collaboration among competing disciplines. it is breath taking.

Link to the Inc article:
https://www.inc.com/linkedin/gary-vaynerchuk/why-my-door-always-open-gary-vaynerchuk.html

Understanding Leadership – As a System

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by Dan Edds in Baldrige, Leadership Systems, Mapping Strategy, Praxis Solutions

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Baldridge, Communicating Strategy, DanEdds, Leadership Systems

us-marine-leadershipThere is a fundamental difference between developing leaders and developing a leadership system. Ideally, leadership development should be based on the requirements of a leadership system that has been designed to execute organizational mission.

Not long ago, a nephew returned home from his 13 week United States Marine basic training. Within a week, he had passed the grueling 54 hour final test of his training known as the crucible, turned 20 years old, and had become a newly minted US. Marine Corp Private. He was a member of one of the most elite fighting force in the world. Upon his return, I asked him about what he had learned about leadership. I was expecting to hear reflections of his experiences and observations of acts of selfless courage. Instead, he spouted off an acronym – JJDIDTIEBUCKLE. He had memorized the acronym and its meaning as part of his training. He knew what every letter meant but I had strong doubts that he had learned anything at all about leadership. He had memorized the dictionary, as the US Marine Corps produces it, but had he learned anything tangible about leadership during his 13 weeks of basic training? I was disappointed.
However, upon further reflection, I realized he had learned a great deal about leadership. Even as a brand-new Marine with the rank of private, he had learned the fundamental basics of the Marine Corp system of leadership. In contrast, how many graduates with basic degrees in business enter their first entry level job and are given the fundamentals of their organizations system of leadership? Do the great business enterprises of our day provide their entry level employees the basics of a unique system of leadership – assuming they have one? More to the point, does Microsoft, Amazon, Federal Express, Exon, Boeing, Walmart, or Volkswagen give their lowest level hires a systematic way of looking at leadership in their on-boarding and initial training? Something tells me no. The larger question: do they even have one? Again, something tells me no.
The U.S. Marine Corp is clearly one of the elite organizations in the world given their mission. Yet they give their newest hires, even before they are officially hired, the keys to the executive suite. They teach every on one of them what is expected of a leader and how they are to lead. They have reduced the idea of leadership to a clearly defined system. Something tells me this is the next generation of leadership thought – leadership as a system.
Just in case anyone is interested. The following is the system of leadership as defined by the United States Marine Corp. A leader must exhibit the following:
• Justice,
• Judgment,
• Dependability,
• Initiative,
• Decisiveness,
• Tact,
• Integrity,
• Endurance,
• Bearing,
• Unselfishness,
• Courage,
• Knowledge,
• Loyalty, and
• Enthusiasm

= JJDIDTIEBUCKLE

Semper Fi

Developing Leaders or a Leadership System?

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Dan Edds in Leadership Systems, Praxis Solutions

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Accelerating the Journey, Baldridge, DanEdds, Leadership Systems, StrategyMapping

leadership-systemThere is no end to bestselling books, videos, seminars, and educational opportunities on leadership. A search on Amazon for books on leadership yields 204,187 results. The same search for “leadership systems” yields only 94 results. Clearly, little is being written on understanding leadership from a systems perspective.

The Baldrige Quality Criteria might be the singular voice for understanding leadership from the perspective of a system rather than a collective group of individuals competing for power. A focus on developing individual leadership skills apart from a clear understanding of a leadership system, usually results in chaos, personal silos, and contention rather than collaboration. Public education might be a valid case on point.

In a recent project with a regional hospital we have the privilege of facilitating the design of a formal leadership system. The results are rather stunning. In our first facilitated focus group the question to their executive leadership was put this way: What is the singular result you looking for from the leadership system? As the facilitation team, we were expecting something like “exceptional patient health”, “patient satisfaction”, strategic execution, etc. However, the COO swung the team to a different way of thinking. “Empowered People” was the singular result of a leadership system. This was followed up by three types of people that needed empowerment – patients, staff, and community. The logic was impeccable. Empowered people is the road to executing mission and vision.
Subsequent facilitated workshops identified critical leadership behaviors that would result in “empowered people”. This was then followed up with specific leadership activities to support leadership behaviors and eventually mission execution. During a final debrief, one of the senior leadership in the group stated: “I have always been promoted because I was a good nurse. But as a leader, I was never sure what I was supposed to do. Now I do? Clearly identifying the requirements, behaviors and activities of a leadership system implications.
Like any system, the first mandate is to identify the requirements of the system. When these requirements are clearly understood, the leadership behaviors, activities, and performance metrics all fall into place. Leaders know exactly what is expected and how they will be measured. Individual leadership styles become subordinate to the leadership system.

Baldrige Rapid Access

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by Dan Edds in Praxis Solutions

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Baldridge, Baldrige, DanEdds, Featured, LeanInGovernment, NationalBaldrideQualityAward

Accelerate the journey! 

Baldrige Rapid Access© was developed in conjunction with Performance Excellence Northwest, the regional Baldrige association This is an entirely new path toward a Baldrige journey. In development for 2 years it takes the normal 6-9 months of work to write a Baldrige application, submit it to a group of examiners, judges, and receive either a site visit or an executive briefing, down to a few weeks. We do this by engaging a small team of professional facilitators and Baldrige examiners in a process of self discovery. In this way, your organization develops its own observations of strengths and opportunities. In addition, the Baldrige framework and values are driven deeper into your organization.

For many organizations it takes 2-3 applications to begin understanding the core of the framework – Approach, Deployment, Learning, and Integration. This is lost time. This approach also mirrors what the national organization is doing but with some additional value added benefits: 1) develops internal Baldrige capacity and leadership; and 2) faster turn around from application submittal to deployed projects to improve excellence.

 

Comments From a National Baldrige Winner

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Dan Edds in Baldrige, Praxis Solutions

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Baldridge, Lean Government, NationalBaldrideQualityAward

The speaker was Mr. Tommy Gonzalez. He was the City Manager of Irving, Texas when they won a National Baldrige Quality Award for excellence. They adopted Baldrige as the structure for their performance improvement initiative and lean as the tool. During his presentation he showed a video clip of a Council meeting. A road construction worker, a member of the Public Works Department, addressing the City Council. He is one of the front line staff that makes a city work. He repairs roads. It is as basic as you can get. For three days he came inside and participated in a lean kaizen event. The objective was faster road construction and repair. The project resulted in some simple redesign of the trucks that repair crews use. A system of drawers were designed to hold tools. Drawers were labeled as to which tools they held. A plate was placed on the back of the truck to make it safer for crews to get inside. Ladders were taken off the top of the truck where they were stacked on top of each other, (where the inevitable usually happened, the one they need was the one on the bottom) and placed on holding racks on the sides of the trailers. And a special mount was built for heavy clamps that could easily slide into and out of the truck with one hand. Simple changes but startling results. The cost and time for road repair dropped in half. As he spoke to the Council he got emotional at the sense of empowerment the City had provided him and his team to improve the quality and value of their work.

The City of Irving is a testimony to the fact that a large urban City can be just as efficient as one of its commercial cousins.

Recent Posts

  • Key Elements of the Leadership System – Managing Vs. Developing
  • The Leadership System: Power of Purpose
  • Leadership System: The Chief Purpose of Leadership
  • The Leadership System: Perfectly Designed to Get Intended Results
  • The Leadership System – Routines & Processes

Blog Categories

  • Developing Leadership Systems
  • Failure of Leadership Development
  • Leadership System Rules
  • Leadership Systems
  • Mapping Strategy
  • Praxis Solutions
    • Balanced Scorecard
    • Baldrige
    • Lean training
  • Systemic Leadership

The Value of Check Lists

Commercial airplanes take off and land thousands of time each day. Their pilots do so routinely. Yet each time a pilot takes off or lands she does so with a check list. The result is safer air travel for millions of travelers. Surgeons are also finding that check lists saves lives. A check list assures the routine gets done correctly. An Office of Financial Aid began using a check list. The result has been fewer errors, faster processing time, happier students, and happier staff evaluators.

Small Change = Big Impact

One of our clients, an Office of Financial Aid, made a small change to their process of processing financial aid applications. They learned in a lean training that small batches often results in faster throughput. So instead of staff grabbing an arm full of aid application files, they took only ten. They would not go back to get another ten until the ten they were working on were finished. The impact was dramatic. No lost files, no running around asking co-workers if they were working on "John's" file, dramatic drop in errors and rework, higher productivity, higher worker satisfaction, and faster awards of financial aid. Simple change, but major impact.

Lean for Teams

Our Lean for Teams workshop was launched in June of 2014 with a college Advising Office. This engaging and interactive training was a customized specifically the the college. It formed the framework for a four day lean kaizen event the followed immediately.

Does Lean Work in Government?

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee is making lean a central part of his reform initiative. From his website: Empower state employees to find efficiencies through greater use of Lean Management. Lean management is an approach that asks those who know best - our front-line employees - to identify strategies to help them serve the people of Washington more quickly and easily. These efficiencies will help us prevent additional cuts to essential services and programs.

Value of a Strategy Map

A strategy map visually communicates the cause and effect relationships that must be in place to successfully execute strategy.

A Board Member States:

If this is where the agency is going and how we are going about it, I am fully committed – and able to talk about it to my peers and potential donors.

Client Testimony

Praxis was very thorough and well organized in their methods for gathering information from a variety of people and sources in our organization to obtain a full and complete picture of our environment.  Their experience in the industry and prior consulting work was very valuable and the final recommendations were thoughtful, meaningful and are valuable to us as we work to improve the efficiency of our organization.

Clay Gehring, Chief Information Officer, Spokane Public Schools

Improving an Office of Financial Aid

Dan facilitated a week long Process Improvement training for our Financial Aid Department.  As a result, our staff have maintained and engaged in a strong focus on process improvement.  Summer is an extremely high processing period as we approach fall quarter at our college.  At this time, because of process improvements, staff are well ahead in awarding aid for students and have surpassed all previous years.

Anne White, Dean of Enrollment Services & Financial Aid

Connecting With Clients

Dan’s ability to connect and communicate with each person on the team is his greatest strength. There were twenty team members from the grants administration and business services groups, a very diverse group, I don't think anyone else could have made the engagement work.

Mason General Hospital – Client Experience

We are now organizing our “nuts and bolts” team with associated workgroups focused on the Baldrige Quality Criteria. Our customer group has already begun our approach to use of social media, now in early deployment
I would highly recommend this offering to anyone seeking Baldrige or even considering a journey to excellence.

Eileen Branscome
Chief Operations Officer, Mason General Hospital

Value of Using a Strategy Map

We are now starting to regularly use the strategy map even at Board Meetings to frame discussions.

Sebastian Koellner, Hopelink - Performance Improvement Manager

ANNOUNCING – BALDRIGE RAPID ACCESS INTENSIVE

Developed in collaboration with the North West's Baldrige alliance member, the Rapid Access Intensive is a high impact intensive designed to accelerate the Baldrige journey. Why wait a year to get the benefit of a Baldrige report when you can accelerate this journey to a few weeks.

Experience With Community Action Partnerships

At Hopelink, we wanted to develop a strategy map and balanced score card, but were not sure how to go about it. Dan and Martin brought a wealth of expertise to the process. I personally appreciated their willingness to be a sounding board for ideas and their enthusiasm for developing structures and visual tools to summarize information.

Sebastian Koellner, Performance Improvement Manager

Experience With Community Action Partnerships

Hopelink is indebted to Martin and Dan for leading us through a process to transform our strategic plan into a strategy map. This new tool makes our strategic plan easily accessible and clear to a variety of external and internal audiences with a deceptively simple visual presentation. After months of work dedicated to developing this map, it has quickly become a much-used and useful performance excellence tool that our leadership refers to on a daily basis.

Marilyn Mason-Plunkett, Hopelink President & CEO

Client Experience

I had the opportunity to observe a series of facilitated exercises conducted by Performance Excellence Northwest. Their unique leadership approach assisted our staff in developing the framework and refining our Baldrige values as we started drafting our first Baldrige application. Their Baldrige Rapid Access approach not only accelerated our application process but improved the quality of that application. I can personally recommend this organization.

Scott Hilburn, President Board of Commissioners, Mason General Hospital.

Winston Churchill


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Contact Information

Praxis Solutions for Nonprofits
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Info@PraxisSolutionsNP.com
(425) 269-8854

Jack Welch on Learning

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."

Baldrige in Public Education

Baldrige Performance Excellence Criteria has a proven track record of driving comprehensive organizational improvement in public education.

Watch this interview, JoAnn Sternke, superintendent of the Pewaukee School District (PSD), as she reflects on PSD’s receiving the prestigious 2013 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award—the United States’ highest honor for quality and performance excellence.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JnraF4DGgY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Baldrige in Healthcare

In the demanding and dynamic nature of Healthcare, Baldrige Performance Excellence has provided a disciplined and structural framework for guiding comprehensive performance. In short, lives are being saved, workers at all levels recognize their role in mission, people want to work for organizations that demonstrate excellence.

Watch David Fox, President of Good Sammaratian Hospital, 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in the health care category.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khdal2dKW1k?rel=0&w=560&h=315]