Do you have a sound strategy to empower your organization to reach your goals, improve results, and become more competitive by aligning your plans, processes, decisions, people, actions, and results?

Having a systematic and effective way to go about achieving all this may seem overwhelming for sure.  If the major focus on is the next board meeting, the next tax levy, the next teacher that is retiring and will need replaced, or the changes desired for next school year, then maybe a proven, comprehensive approach would help.  After all, aligning plans, processes, decisions, people, actions and results may be easier said than done.  And how do you really know if you’re being successful if you don’t see a spike (up or down) in your performance measures and they seem to just move along at a steady state; no real improvement and no real decline.  Is your organization reaching it’s full potential?  What about the future? What changes are on the horizon that you know will take shape and have an impact on your organization by the time your district has to go to the ballot box again for renewed funding?  Will it be enough, and are you prepared to ensure it will be?

Where is your organization along the improvement continuum?  Reacting to problems as they arrive with fortitude and precision.  Or, implementing preventative measures learned from previous experience along the way to a proactive approach to operations.  Better yet, has a systematic evaluation system been implemented to predict the most likely situations that are most susceptible to breakdowns; augmented by sensors that show indications of needed attention at the earliest possible signs of trouble.  Or has your organization implemented systematic, repeatable methods of organizational assessment,  analysis, and innovation as the primary approach to prevention of organizational stagnation or dis-function? Try this short quiz to see where you may be on assessing your organization.

A simple test of where you may be along the improvement continuum would be to write down what you believe are the answers to the following questions.  Make your answers quick and simple.  You shouldn’t take more that a couple of moments to answer each question.  Once you’ve completed the quiz and select “submit quiz” please scroll down to the bottom of the next screen.

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How can you get a handle on your performance measures and which measures are indicating what?

Organizational effectiveness hinges on ensuring you’re putting enough resources on the right business processes (the key work processes that your organization pursues that create value for your customer).  Additionally, how well you perform those processes forms the essence of how efficient your organization is at producing value to the customer.  But what are all the key support processes? And how much resource is required to run those critical support processes?  How do you even start to differentiate between your key support processes, and your key business processes? 

So as a senior leader you’re monitoring a lot of performance measures, but which measures are key? And which measures are predictors of major business trends or in process measures?  What should you be looking at to provide a check on major business performance and allow enough time to adjust resources to ensure sustained results?

Or, is there no process in place at all, and are decisions and the analysis that supports those decisions ad-hoc?  Is there a decision “science” to analyze problems and a systematic method to uncover root cause(s) to problems?  Do politics and intuition have a disproportionate impact on driving your decisions? Or do you use valid data to support your business decisions?

Having a sound method of determining your key business processes and key supporting processes is a good place to start in differentiating between the myriad of performance measure you’re monitoring.

As a rule of thumb, key support processes produce key work process inputs (business support requirements).  Key business support requirements are fundamental, essential, crucial, or indispensable process inputs needed for successfully producing a key work process output.  Your key performance measures are most closely associated with the voice of your customer and key value levers (key business processes).  You work backward from voice of your customer through your key performance measures.

It is essential to identify those required/essential inputs to your key work processes.  These by definition are your key support process.   Now move to a more refined mapping process to capture your key support processes and the performance measures associated with them. 

Your key performance indicators are now better defined along with those key “in process” indicators; namely your key support process measures which enable a more proactive approach to managing your business processes.  Your decisions to allocate the necessary resources can now be more deliberate and backed up by data versus intuition.

Innovation is really about three things: (1) building the right environment to spawn innovation; (2) identifying the most likely innovation that will succeed; and (3) knowing when to throw in the towel on an idea that didn’t work out.  Because let’s be honest, time and money are way too valuable in an austere environment.

So how do you ensure really good ideas are getting the proper attention when it comes to resources?  If you feel your best method of recouping any investment in innovative ideas is “hope,” then maybe you need a more deliberate, structured approach.

A pretty safe approach to innovation would be a structured approach that takes ideas through a deliberate process.  The process should identify the most likely innovations that will succeed; and in turn,  give you an accurate indication of when an idea should probably be jettisoned to the “good-idea fairy” for stewardship. 

That structured approach or “innovation protocol” should involve:

• Your Mission, Vision, Values
• How you obtain Voice of the Customer information
• Strategic Planning Process
• Business Review Process
• Organizational Performance Measurement Process
• Your Knowledge Management Processes
• Your approach to Process Design and Improvement
• Your approach to Budgeting
• Your approach to developing Action Plans
• And, a robust Change Management Process

For-Profit organizations must keep all this in mind while not sacrificing organizational agility; not-for-profit or Education institutions must be conscious of not allowing competitors to surpass you while you’re fettered in the decisions associated with implementing your innovative idea.  However, Innovation should be considered a business imperative first and foremost, and not something to do only if left-over resources become available.

Below is what might be considered an overly complicated process map regarding a protocol for innovation management; but, closer examination would reveal an integrated business approach to ensuring the most likely to survive innovation is given the appropriate amount of attention to ensure you’re successful taming the innovation management monster.

The Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence focuses on results in the key areas of student learning; processes; students and other customers (parents or colleges, and possibly community-workforce rolls); education institution workforce; leadership and governance; and budget, finance, and markets.

The Education Criteria is not prescriptive in nature but results oriented.  It will not prescribe the tools, processes, or structure you should use to ensure success.  The Education Criteria is more a systematic approach to organizational assessment.  The road-way to improved performance is aided by focusing on the measures associated with those key areas mentioned above. 

In the Education Criteria, the concept of excellence includes three components: (1) a well-conceived and well-executed assessment strategy; (2) year-to-year improvement in key measures and indicators of performance, especially student learning; and (3) demonstrated leadership in performance and performance improvement relative to comparable organizations and appropriate benchmarks.

The Education Criteria build alignment across your organization by making connections between and reinforcing measures derived from your organization’s processes and strategy.  These measures tie directly to student, other customer, and stakeholder value and to overall performance.  When these measures are used, activities are channeled in consistent directions with less need for detailed procedures, centralized decision-making, or overly complex process management.  Your communication plan is therefore wrapped around consistent performance requirements and lead to increased support to your education organization.

The Baldrige-based approach all starts with increased, frank and open communication with your customers and stakeholders.  A move toward a better understanding of your organization starts with completing the Organizational Profile.  Even if you never complete the entire comprehensive submission for examination, the effort given to completing the Organizational Profile will garner a better understanding and insight into your organizational performance and provide “self-help” in determining your next steps.