 VCQ in the News |
VCQ Receives Funding to Develop Baldrige-Based Training Course
The Vermont Council for Quality, along with MassExcellence, the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence, and the Washington State Quality Award, has been awarded funding for the development of a Baldrige-based and performance excellence curricula targeted at education or manufacturing institutions. VCQ will direct their efforts toward developing a program aimed at educational institutions. Among the plans for the four curricula are: leadership training, communication and strategic planning, web-based video lessons with self-paced learning, and procedures for implementing the Baldrige Criteria.
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| Thank you to Our Sponsors |
Benefactor Level
~ R.E.M. Development ~
Platinum Level
~ Rutland Regional Medical Center ~
Gold Level
~ Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Vermont ~
~ UVM - School of Business ~
~ Vermont Training Program - VT Dept. of Economic Development ~
Bronze Level
~ Fletcher Allen
Health Care ~
~ Northeast Delta Dental ~
~The Darcy Group, LTD ~
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| QUEST FOR EXCELLENCE® WASHINGTON D.C.
APRIL 12-14, 2010 |
Because Organizations Don't Achieve Excellence on Their Own
Join Vermont Council for Quality at this year's Quest and help take your organization to the next level! This is the opportunity to share best practices, learn from mistakes, and build a network with leaders from business, education, health care, and nonprofit sectors. Quest for Excellence is also a great way to learn the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and how to improve your organization, engage your customers and your workforce, and achieve world-class results. A Full Conference Schedule is now available!
To learn more about the conference and its benefits, click here. |
Baldrige for Breakfast |
Do you have a best practice you would like to share?
Contact VCQ at 802-655-1910 to let us know about your quality improvement practices and highlight them with other Vermonters. Learn more by visiting our website. |
What Can We Learn from the Toyota Way? |
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Join our colleagues at the Granite State Quality Council in Concord, New Hampshire along with co-author David Meier for two upcoming workshops:
April 15 - The Key Concepts of The Toyota Way
April 16 - Toyota Talent
Register by April 9 for discount pricing.
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| New Article! |
2009 Baldrige Award Winner,
MIDWAY USA |
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"For some people, enthusiasm can be contagious"
Larry Potterfield, CEO of Midway USA, has a passion for the Baldrige Quality Program. The Columbia, MO-based shooting supply retailer has implemented the program of excellence for 5 years now and has seen vast improvements in his business. After winning the 2009 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Potterfield's enthusiasm for Baldrige translated into the local community. A handful of Columbia residents and local business leaders are planning to start the first local Baldrige chapter in the nation. "This is a really, really smart and well-educated community," Potterfield said. "But there's never been a tool to help us individually and collectively raise the bar."
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VCQ's Annual
Recognition and Awards Ceremony
May 21, 2010 - 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Location: Lake Morey Resort, Fairlee, VT |
Kentucky Commissioner of Education and
Previous Superintendent of Iredell-Statesville Schools, N.C.
2008 Baldrige National Quality Award Recipient
Please join us this year as we recognize and award the Vermont organizations and individuals who have been involved with our program throughout 2009.
Our keynote speaker, Terry Holliday, Ph.D., is the Kentucky Commissioner of Education and a previous Baldrige National Quality Award Recipient. Dr. Holliday has a long list of awards and accomplishments that include 2009 North Carolina Superintendent of the Year and a recipient of the 2009 Grayson Medal for Innovation in Quality. To see a video of Dr. Holiday speak, click here (3rd video down).
Other highlights of the Recognition and Awards Ceremony include a Spotlight on Quality. The following leaders from Vermont organizations will share their successes and lessons learned from 10:00 a.m.-12 p.m.
Thomas Huebner, President
Rutland Regional Medical Center
"Transforming RRMC to Excellence"
Jeff Cohen, Director
Vermont Office of Child Support
"Management by Fact"
Michael Lane, Associate Director
Instrumentation and Technical Services, UVM
"Building a Customer Centered Culture"
John Everitt, Superintendent
South Burlington School District
"Continuous Improvement on the Ground"
The event will also feature World Cafe conversation questions on performance improvement, giving participants an active role in the conference to network and learn from one another.
Vermont Council for Quality offers grants for anyone in the manufacturing, health care, telecommunications, information technology, or environmental industries. Discounts are available if you register in groups of 5 or more. Click Here for pricing information.
May 21st will be here sooner than you think! Save your spot now and register online, or download the registration form. |
Webinar: Measuring Satisfaction:
With and Without Surveys
APRIL 16, 2010 |
Presenter: Robin Lawton
President of International Management Technologies, Inc.
Early Bird Deadline Approaching! Register Before April 9th to save $70 off the list price!
Join us for our third and final part of our customer-focused webinar series, Measuring Satisfaction: With and Without Surveys. This interactive session is designed for enterprise leaders, department managers, and professionals charged with the development and deployment of satisfaction surveys, product and service excellence initiatives, performance measurement systems, and balanced scorecards. Participants will appreciate the Mr. Lawton's humor and practical application that makes an otherwise dry and technical topic fun and personally relevant. Participants will learn how to:
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Define strategic objectives in a way average employees find personally relevant.
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Measure intangible knowledge and service work, relevant to customers.
- Translate ambiguous customer perceptions into objective criteria.
- Design satisfaction surveys that direct and track improvement
- Inspire others to actually want to create measures of customer success.
- Support innovation, cultural change and competitive advantage.
Register more than 7 days before webinar for the Early Bird price, as ridiculously low as $75/person per event -- Learn More -- (As a VCQ member use the promotion code "VCQ" on the registration sheet). If you are not currently one of our members, this is a great time to join and begin getting discounts on superb programs like this.
Theses interactive events are designed to introduce you and your team to new ideas and actually put them into practice during the session. To discuss how the webinar content will be personally relevant to you, please call Robin Lawton's office at 941-907-0666.
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Are You Ready for Self-Assessment? |
Whether large or small, in business, education, or healthcare, one locality or with sites worldwide, your organization can benefit from conducting a self-assessment using the appropriate Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and taking action for improvement.
Begin your journey by completing the Organizational Profile. The Organizational Profile sets the context for the way your organization operates. Your environment, key working relationships, and strategic challenges and advantages serve as an overarching guide for your organizational performance management system.
It will help to ensure a common understanding among your self-assessment and action teams about what is important, the key influences on how your organization operates, and where you organization is headed. The organizational profile guides your teams in sorting and selecting the most useful data and information for the assessment.
The importance of beginning with your Organizational Profile:
- It is the starting point for self-assessment and for writing an application for the Baldrige Award.
- It helps identify potential gaps in key information and focus on key performance requirements and results.
- It is used by examiners in the application review process to help understand your organization and what you consider important.
- It is also used as an initial self-assessment tool to help identify areas that may need to be addressed in action planning.
Why Consider Self-Assessment?
Organizations cite many reasons for undertaking a self-assessment and action initiative:
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Customers and/or competitors are driving a need to change.
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Your industry is in a state of flux.
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Your organization is in a leadership position, and you want to make sure you remain there.
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Business is good, and you want to keep it that way.
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Your leadership team has committed to a self-assessment for organization learning.
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Your organization's values are aligned with the Core Values of the Criteria.
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You see a clear connection between your key issues and the systematic approach embodied in the Criteria for improving organizational performance practices.
Take your first step to implementing the Criteria and begin your organization's journey toward performance excellence!
Download a Simplified Organization Profile to complete your profile and submit it to the Vermont Council for Quality to receive feedback by trained examiners and recognition at our Award Ceremony as an organization committed to excellence. More information will be available next month on submitting your Organizational Profile to Vermont Council for Quality. | |
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