Pursuing business excellence.

[check] This checklist refers to the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) European Business Excellence Model, popularly known as the Business Excellence Model. A model for excellence offers all organisations the opportunity to assess how far they have travelled down the path to excellence, and which gaps or weaknesses they need to address.

Definition

The EFQM Business Excellence Model is a non-prescriptive framework based on nine criteria. Five of these are "Enablers" and four are "Results". The "Enabler" criteria cover what an organisation does. The "Results" criteria cover what an organisation achieves. In April 1999 the Model was revised to take account of the growing importance of knowledge management, and additional measures to reflect the degree of innovation and learning within an organisation were introduced.

The Model states that excellent business performance results from the organisation's impact on its Customers, its People and on Society at large. These impacts are achieved through the organisation's Leadership driving its Policy and Strategy, and getting its People to make best use of Partnerships and Resources to operate and improve the organisation's key Processes. In graphic terms this is expressed in the following diagram:

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Advantages of the Business Excellence Model

The model provides a framework:

* which is easy to understand and assimilate across a wide range of organisations

* for purposive business improvement by identifying those gaps and weaknesses to address as well as strengths to consolidate and develop

* for constructive self-assessment and learning on the job

* for flexibility: organisations can go for an award, or put the model to work as a general business improvement tool

* for benchmarking against other organisations.

Requirements of the Business Excellence Model

An honest recognition of the organisation's maturity and attitude towards its people.

People who are thoroughly trained and conversant with the model's processes.

A top-down, organisation-wide commitment to tackling the model, and the resources to carry out the collection and evaluation of data on each of the nine criteria above.

Time and energy--you cannot transform a company overnight.

Action checklist

1. Get to know the Model

Familiarise yourself with both the content and process of the Model. Understand how it works, and where to start. Looking at the diagram above, the enabler criteria deal with:

* Leadership and its required best practice in communication, empowerment and how change and improvement really work in the organisation.

* Policy and Strategy and how the organisation's values, vision and goals are established.

* People: how the organisation energises the full potential of its people to improve their own skills and improve the business.

* Partnerships and Resources: how all resources are effectively managed and how dealings with partners work to contribute to the achievement of business goals.

* Processes: how the key processes of supply are turned into products and services that are delivered to the customer.

Understand how best to measure the results that the enablers deliver:

* People Results: people's perceptions of the organisation and how their needs and expectations are met.

* Customer Results: customers' perceptions of the organisation and how their needs and expectations are met.

* Society Results: how the image and position of the organisation are viewed in the community and what the organisation does to try and improve this view.

* Key Performance Results: how enablers and results feed into financial results, how targets are met and reviewed.

These nine criteria are further divided into 32 sub-criteria for purposes of clarifying emphasis, and scoring.

Understand the methodology--RADAR--by which self-assessment works. RADAR states that the organisation needs to state how each of the enabler and Results criteria are Approached, Deployed, Assessed and Reviewed.

2. Develop commitment throughout the organisation

Start with commitment from senior management but make sure the model becomes a way of working for all employees. Give staff an overview of the Model and make clear what is involved.

3. Train your employees

You need to have people who understand how the Model works, how to ask the right questions, collect and evaluate the responses, and score them in line with the model. Use external consultants or train your own people.

4. Establish the action teams

You will need three, preferably separate, action teams which are part of the overall project team. These should be concerned with:

management overview

data collection

assessment.

5. Decide on the approach

Decide whether to:

a) go for the award. This arguably requires an infrastructure that all but the large companies do not have, although more and more SMEs are adopting the Model.

b) use the Model as a business improvement tool.

c) ignore the Model altogether. This is effectively a non-starter as it is tantamount to the organisation rejecting a proven business improvement tool.

You might find that you do not need to tackle all the criteria, and that you may prefer to focus on one particular area. The advantage of using the Model in this way is that it is integrated and you can concentrate on the areas where efforts are needed most.

6. Decide on the starting-point

Some of the enablers may be a little more contentious, even dangerous, than others. Eliciting feedback on managers' effectiveness as leaders or as people managers may produce some surprises if not some unpalatable truths. It may be more productive to begin with Partnerships and Resources, or Processes in order to get people into the mindset of the model. You might find that, by tackling a less contentious issue, the more contentious become more approachable.

7. Choose your data-gathering method

Options include:

* surveys requiring yes/no answers

* matrix charts requiring a response on a scale of 1-10

* pro forma charts leading to evidence of achievements and areas to improve

* the Award Simulation approach or the Snapshot software tool devised by the British Quality Foundation.

Make sure you get the questions right--you can waste a lot of time asking the wrong questions and you may engender resistance.

8. Try some scoring

Advantage may be lost if you do not try to get some hard measures for largely soft issues. Research shows that "measurement-conscious" companies are stealing a competitive march on those that do not attempt measurement disciplines. Scores may vary wildly from one assessor to another strengthening the case for trained people and persevering with scores over time.

9. Find out where you are

Writing up the summary report including scores and comments from feedback will give a good idea of how much there is to tackle. This provides the basis for generating and prioritising the plan for business improvement. If you decide to go for full implementation, the business improvement plan will be a key component in compiling the report to be submitted for examination by the EFQM.

Do's and dont's of pursuing business excellence

Do

* Look at your organisational culture if trying things out means getting blamed if they go wrong.

* Focus on planning improvements.

* Consider a pilot.

* Start by learning all the benefits, as well as the drawbacks, of the Model.

* Ensure that all the benefits of self-assessment are communicated clearly to all staff.

Don't 

* Ignore the importance of sound measurements.

* Try to cut corners, go too fast, or ignore criticism.

* Rely on anecdote--people's perceptions and concrete evidence provide a sound basis for improvement.

* Start an organisational fad--going for excellence is a continuing objective.

Useful reading

Business excellence handbook, 5th ed., Chris Hakes Bristol: Bristol Quality Centre, 1999

EFQM excellence model 1999 Brussels: European Foundation for Quality Management, 1999

Useful addresses

European Foundation for Quality Management

Avenue des Pleiades 15, 1200 Brussels, Belgium

Tel: [phone] www.efqm.org

British Quality Foundation 32-34 Great Peter Street, London, SW1P 2QX

Tel: [phone] www.quality-foundation.co.uk

Thought starters

Do you have:

* Measurement and control systems that provide early warning signs of problems?

* Improvement methods to identify what is going wrong and do something about it?

* Effective goal-setting so that people know what both they and their colleagues are supposed to be doing?

* Effective deployment of the skills and energies of all your staff?