Posted by Bob Fangmeyer
Being a bit of a Baldrige geek, I have an unwelcomed tendancy to apply Baldrige concepts and principles at home. So yesterday morning, while lying in bed listening to the 40th inch of snow fall in the past 5 days, my wife suggested, somewhat sarcastically, that my blog post should be about the snowpocalypse we've been experiencing in the DC area. Of course she thought she was being cute, thinking there was no way I could somehow connect Baldrige to the extremely unusual weather. After 20 years of marriage and 13 years with Baldrige, I'd think she would know better.
The snow storms of the past few days have been history-making. Never before has the DC area seen so much snowfall in such a short period of time. In fact, we have already exceeded the all-time snow totals for the entire season. Yet no one should have been unprepared. The forecasters did an outstanding job informing everyone of what to expect.
In the Baldrige Criteria, we emphasize the importance of focusing on the future and being prepared-- having plans, processes, and resources in place that will allow your organization to weather any storm and even predict some of them. Yet all organizations are faced with limited resources. You cannot be fully prepared, fully staffed, and fully funded for every possible situation; only those that are likely or those that must be avoided at all costs.
What a difference knowing what to expect makes. Imagine the impact of these storms if the best information available was Al Roker telling us "Expect snow this weekend." Reliable predictions of the outcomes are absolutely imperative if you are to be properly prepared. Reliable predictions, however, are not easy to come by. It takes a lot of valid data about your environment, your operations, and your past and present outcomes before you can realistically begin to project future performance, much less predict the impact of a change to one of those elements.
For these reasons, the Baldrige scoring guidelines ask for performance projections, but only expects them from organizations that have demonstrated a fairly high level of maturity in the design, implementation, and improvement of their processes and in the tracking and use of organizational performance measures. It's kind of like comparing today's computer-based weather models to the prognostic abilities of a typical 19th century explorer. He would be able to tell you "A storm's a brewin'-- snow by nightfall", but with data and systems developed over many years, we can know days in advance how much snow to expect, when it will fall, where it will fall, how fast it will fall, when it will stop, how strong the winds will be, and what the temperature will be-- all valuable information for ensuring the various components of the system work in an integrated manner to enable everyone to weather the storm.
OK- so now I want to hear from you- do projections matter? Usually, they are different than goals. How do you use the two in tandem? Or do you just make them up so you can look good?
Being a bit of a Baldrige geek, I have an unwelcomed tendancy to apply Baldrige concepts and principles at home. So yesterday morning, while lying in bed listening to the 40th inch of snow fall in the past 5 days, my wife suggested, somewhat sarcastically, that my blog post should be about the snowpocalypse we've been experiencing in the DC area. Of course she thought she was being cute, thinking there was no way I could somehow connect Baldrige to the extremely unusual weather. After 20 years of marriage and 13 years with Baldrige, I'd think she would know better.The snow storms of the past few days have been history-making. Never before has the DC area seen so much snowfall in such a short period of time. In fact, we have already exceeded the all-time snow totals for the entire season. Yet no one should have been unprepared. The forecasters did an outstanding job informing everyone of what to expect.
In the Baldrige Criteria, we emphasize the importance of focusing on the future and being prepared-- having plans, processes, and resources in place that will allow your organization to weather any storm and even predict some of them. Yet all organizations are faced with limited resources. You cannot be fully prepared, fully staffed, and fully funded for every possible situation; only those that are likely or those that must be avoided at all costs.
What a difference knowing what to expect makes. Imagine the impact of these storms if the best information available was Al Roker telling us "Expect snow this weekend." Reliable predictions of the outcomes are absolutely imperative if you are to be properly prepared. Reliable predictions, however, are not easy to come by. It takes a lot of valid data about your environment, your operations, and your past and present outcomes before you can realistically begin to project future performance, much less predict the impact of a change to one of those elements.
For these reasons, the Baldrige scoring guidelines ask for performance projections, but only expects them from organizations that have demonstrated a fairly high level of maturity in the design, implementation, and improvement of their processes and in the tracking and use of organizational performance measures. It's kind of like comparing today's computer-based weather models to the prognostic abilities of a typical 19th century explorer. He would be able to tell you "A storm's a brewin'-- snow by nightfall", but with data and systems developed over many years, we can know days in advance how much snow to expect, when it will fall, where it will fall, how fast it will fall, when it will stop, how strong the winds will be, and what the temperature will be-- all valuable information for ensuring the various components of the system work in an integrated manner to enable everyone to weather the storm.
OK- so now I want to hear from you- do projections matter? Usually, they are different than goals. How do you use the two in tandem? Or do you just make them up so you can look good?
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