Last year, the Performance Excellence Network (PEN) announced a new tiered assessment/Award structure, with three options that now form a gradual pathway for organizations desiring to go from good to great — or from great to excellent!  “Option 1” is positioned to be your organization’s first step on its journey to excellence — it’s a couple of dozen questions that represent the Baldrige Organizational Profile (the environment in which your organization operates) plus four other questions.  It’s intended to be simple and easy to use to identify your first “opportunities for improvement,” but many organizations have a difficult time getting started: writing an application can be viewed as daunting and/or organizations don’t have the capacity (or know a logical process) for getting your key factors down on paper.
PEN is excited to announce a pilot full-day workshop intended to help organizations take that first step towards excellence and complete an “Option 1” application.  The workshop, hosted on March 13, will help you better understand the value of Baldrige, and will also help your leadership team complete most of your Option 1 application.  You’ll learn what’s behind each of the Option 1 questions, and then have time to write your organization’s responses and received feedback and coaching from the facilitators, who are Baldrige experts.

The Option 1 Application is more than an award application.  As your team answers the Option 1 Application questions, you will find that there are some questions that are easy to answer – but some that are far more difficult.  As your team discusses and explores these questions, you’ll find that your team forms a consensus on the key factors facing your organization and are much more aligned in how you view the organization.

Workshop objectives:

• Explore the value of Baldrige and understand PEN’s Award process.
• Write a draft of your organization’s Option 1 Award Application.
• Understand what PEN Evaluators are looking for in Option 1 applications and why those are important to your organization.
• Understand the technical requirements of the Option 1 Award application.

When you leave the workshop with your application, you will want to review it with your key staff and do one last proofing before submitting by the PEN submission deadline – after which, you’ll receive feedback (to help you identify and prioritize organizational opportunities for improvement) and recognition.

Who should attend and what is the investment?

We recommend that a team of at least three — but ideally your whole team of — senior leaders attend this session.  Workshop fees cover teams of 3-6 (additional participants are slightly more to cover catering costs): team fees are $900 for PEN members ($1800 for non-members), which covers the knowledge, materials, and breakfast/lunch.

Workshop hosted at a location TBD in the Twin Cities.

Don’t miss this great opportunity to start your organization’s journey to excellence!  Register today!

Facilitators for the workshop:

Paul Grizzell is President of Core Values Partners, Inc., whose mission is to help organizations focus, align, and accelerate their performance excellence efforts through effective use of the Baldrige Criteria.  Paul has 23 years of experience in working with the Baldrige Criteria.  Paul is a Master Examiner with the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and a Judge with the Baldrige-based American Health Care Association’s highest-level Gold Award.  In addition, he is the Foreign Evaluation Expert with the China Quality Award and a Licensed Advisor and Licensed Trainer with the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM).  As a consultant he has worked with multiple recipients of the Baldrige Award, state quality awards, and the AHCA Quality Award.

Dave Brucks is the Global Quality Continuous Improvement Director at Entegris in Chaska, MN.  He led Seagate’s global effort to implement the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a framework to drive continuous improvement for four years.  He was a 2013 Baldrige Executive Fellow and has examiner experience with the regional and national Baldrige programs.  He is a former board chair and current member of the Performance Excellence Network Board.  Dave has over 20 years of leadership experience in Quality and Reliability organizations.