The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities
mn.gov/disability-mn
Providing information, education, and training to build knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes that will lead to increased independence, productivity, self determination, integration and inclusion (IPSII) for people with developmental disabilities and their families.

1. Quality and the Baldrige Framework

Narration:
Quality is excellence in everything we think, say, and do, continuous improvement and innovation to be the best we can be. Always striving for "world class"; the best of the best.

This presentation is a documentation of the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities' quality journey since 1997. The Council wanted to share samples of their work with others to encourage adoption of continuous quality improvement techniques and thinking.

Bill Harreld is the President and Founder of QCI Quality Culture Institute. His 34 year career with IBM was instrumental in IBM winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1990. Since 1998, he has worked with the Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities on quality improvement, and the application of the Baldrige Framework to the Council's work.

Bill Harreld: A framework is kind of a big picture model of what you're going to work with, where the tools are within the framework, then working on how you improve processes and that sort of thing. The criteria in Baldrige include an organization overview, which tells about your strategy, your direction, and what your environment is like. Another area of that is what I call the driver triad, which is the leadership and the planning and the strategic direction we're working in.

Then you go into the work triad, often called the results triad, which is what you're doing with your workers or your suppliers to provide your process outputs. Then you get into the measurements and looking at the results. And the results… go across the board from results from customers, results for the workforce, that sort of thing.

The Baldrige criteria are seven categories. They're with leadership, and they're your strategic planning, and the customer focus relationships. Then there's another set, kind of we call them the results area, and that's the workforce focus, which includes supplier focus, operations focus, and then the area of results, which includes a number of them, product and process results, customer-focused results, the workforce-focused results, leadership and governance. And then financial and market results.

All of those utilize another category which is measurements, analysis, and knowledge management where we look for all of the fact-based knowledge and the information that we use in all of the results and directions in which we move. There is kind of an umbrella that's called the organization profile, that is kind of an umbrella overall that talks at a very high level of strategic direction, what's the environment that an organization is operating in, that kind of thing.

Narration:
Malcolm Baldrige was Secretary of Commerce under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987. Baldrige's award-winning managerial excellence contributed to long-term improvement in economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in government. Baldrige was a proponent of quality management as a key to his country's prosperity and long-term strength. He took a personal interest in the legislation that became the Quality Improvement Act of 1987 and helped draft one of the early versions.

Secretary of Commerce Baldrige died in Northern California on July 25, 1987, after sustaining internal injuries from a rodeo accident. In recognition of his contributions, Congress named the annual Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for product quality in his honor.

What are the Important Concepts for a Business or Organization Workforce Beginning Its Quality Journey?

Bill Harreld:
The first thing is to help them understand their plans… understand what their results are, what the direction of the business is. Many times organizations don't take time out to look at "What are their plans, what's their organization?" Oftentimes they're chasing the inevitable ball and not stopping, backing off, and taking the time to evaluate what business we're really in, what business we choose to be in, and what are the future directions of our business or the customers, the needs of the customers.

So those are very important concepts. And then bring those to the workforce. Help them understand all of these current situations in the business and where we're going and then beginning our quality journey. Quality journey means what we're going to do to provide business, and the best of the best.

©2024 The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities
Administration Building   50 Sherburne Avenue   Room G10
St. Paul, Minnesota 55155
Phone: 651-296-4018   Toll-free number: 877-348-0505   MN Relay Service: 800-627-3529 OR 711
Email: admin.dd.info@state.mn.us    View Privacy Policy    An Equal Opportunity Employer 

The GCDD is funded under the provisions of P.L. 106-402. The federal law also provides funding to the Minnesota Disability Law Center, the state Protection and Advocacy System, and to the Institute on Community Integration, the state University Center for Excellence. The Minnesota network of programs works to increase the IPSII of people with developmental disabilities and families into community life.

This project was supported, in part by grant number 2401MNSCDD, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects with government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official ACL policy.

This website is supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $1,152,808.00 funded by ACL/HHS and $222,000.00 funded by non-federal-government source(s). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS, or the U.S. Government.