See also —
Defining
Organizational
Excellence
Developing an Excellence Metric
Is your organization is among the growing number that have adopted "excellence" in some form as one of their primary goals? If so, how is this goal being achieved? In many cases, "excellence" appears only in a mission or vision statement. Where it does appear in strategy and action plans, it is often a code word for profitability or productivity or quality. A goal of "operational excellence" is especially popular with manufacturers but it usually means quality or profitability in practice if it has any meaning at all.
Few organizations have any clear, explicit definition of what they mean by "excellence". Without such a definition, they cannot measure progress toward it.
Organizations that are truly committed to an excellence goal must have a way to measure both where they are and their progress toward excellence. They need an excellence metric that specifies exactly what constitutes excellence in terms that can be measured.
Developing an excellence metric may sound easy but it is often difficult. Unless your organization has a narrow focus such as market leadership or lowest cost or highest quality, the metric will have several dimensions and require tradeoffs among them. More common is the excellence goal flowing from a mission or vision statement. Here, vague ideals dominate — making a "great place to work", with "great people", having the "best quality products and services", and so on.
Our commentary on Organizational Excellence goes into this in more detail and suggests ways that you might develop a definition or metric for your organization.
Our Services
If you would like to get help with this, we can facilitate a process aimed at developing a practical metric for excellence in your organization. As a facilitator, we would bring both expertise on what can and cannot be measured in practice and experience translating vague terms into actionable specifics. An outside facilitator also adds a fresh perspective that is free from internal politics, cultural myopia, and similar baggage.
We find that the best format is a late afternoon or evening session to discuss ideas and implications, followed by an early morning session to reach closure. The overnight period allows "soak" time that seems to improve understanding and sharpen participant's sense for where they want to go.
If you have questions or would like to discuss a facilitated excellence definition process for your organization, please contact us.