 |
 |
VCQ NEWS
One of the Highest Attended Regional Conferences
The Vermont Council for Quality was honored to have co-sponsored the Baldrige Regional Conference this year with our neighboring state program, the Granite State Quality Council. The conference was the second highest attended Regional Conference in the last 5 years with 301 people registered. The Baldrige National Quality Program sponsors two Regional Conferences each year in the fall along with four state award programs.
We were delighted to welcome a group from New Zealand who came to not only learn and share at the Regional Conference with other attendees, but also visited State Award recipients in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Colorado.
It was a great day of learning and networking for all who attended. 21 Baldrige Award recipients presented their best practices at the conference. Participants had many opportunities to speak with the award recipients on a personal level.
Thank you to all who supported the conference!
Excellence in Higher Education Review
By Linda Mitchell, Chair, Business Administration Department, Lyndon State College
The Excellence in Higher Education Conference was terrific! The featured speaker, Tim Jares from Malcolm Baldrige Award winner Monfort College of Business, was outstanding in content, presentation, and inspiration. He gave us lots of ideas and showed us how we can improve the quality of our College. As a result of what I learned at the Conference, I have both a short list of things we can do in the next year or so to improve the performance of our department, and several long-term objectives (e.g., winning a state award!). We are already implementing new testing based on what we learned at the Conference.
I was inspired by the speaker and came away with lots of specific information. I attended with others from Lyndon State College and from my department. The speaker and the literature provided have given us tools for serious and productive discussion of how to change in order to achieve excellence. The Vermont Council for Quality presentation on "Measuring Your Performance" showed us that we have lots of expert support nearby.
The whole Conference was beautifully organized. The four hour length was just right for getting lots of information but not overwhelming us. Being with people from other organizations was stimulating and useful.
Linda M. Mitchell, Chair
Business Administration Department
Lyndon State College
The Business Administration Departments from the State Colleges sponsored the Excellence in Higher Education Conference to bring Tim Jares of Monfort College of Business to Vermont. Your organization can sponsor similar events through VCQ to bring National speakers to Vermont. Call VCQ to design your conference at 802-655-1910.
Baldrige Express Assessment Survey Testimonial
By Larry Shirland, Professor, School of Business Administration, UVM
In an attempt to assess faculty and staff opinions concerning the operation of the School of Business Administration at UVM, we conducted the Baldrige Express assessment survey on September 22, 2006 at our annual faculty retreat. Forty-one individuals completed the survey. It was felt that the assessment would provide the School’s leadership with information that could be used to improve day-to-day operations and to provide a basis for strategic planning for the future. The resulting assessment report was distributed to all School of Business Administration employees. We are currently analyzing the results to identify three or four projects for improvement. The School’s plan is to administer the assessment again in 2007.
The Baldrige Express version of the assessment survey was chosen because we had a limited amount of time (1 hour) during the retreat and we felt that, since this was the first time we have collected data from our faculty and staff, we needed a tool that would not be overly onerous to complete. The Express version met our objectives nicely.
We would strongly recommend using this tool to any organization that wishes to assess their current strengths and weaknesses and to help with the continuous improvement process.
Larry Shirland
Professor of Business Administration
School of Business Administration, UVM
To learn how your organization can get involved with a quick and effective approach to measuring your performance, call VCQ at 802-655-1910.
Welcome New and Renewing VCQ Members
Renewing Members are indicated with an asterisk*
Gold Member:
Rutland Regional Medical Center*
Bronze Member:
VA Hospital*
Organizational Member:
Chroma Technology
NAMI-Vermont
Individual Member:
Rick Leete, Community College of Vermont*
Patricia Launer, Vermont Program for Quality in Health Care
All of VCQ Members include: Anonymous Benefactor; National Council for Performance Excellence; BlueCross BlueShield of Vermont/The Vermont Health Plan; Rutland Regional Medical Center; Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom; VA Hospital; Chroma Technology Corp.; NAMI-Vermont; North Country Hospital; Rhino Foods; University of Vermont; Vermont Energy Investment Corporation; Vermont Office of Child Support; Patty Launer; Rick Leete; and Sue Tatro.
As a VCQ member, you can take advantage of all the member benefits we offer – organizational assessments at a special member price, discounts on all of our education and training classes, advanced notice and reduced rates for all of our sponsored conferences and events, and much more!
Watch for more exciting benefits coming soon! For more information, visit our Membership section of our website.
Thank you to all for your support of the Vermont Program!
The 11 Core Values to Achieve Performance Excellence
This month's Core Value focus is on Customer-Driven Excellence/Learning-Centered Education/Patient-Focused Excellence
- Visionary Leadership
- Customer-Driven Excellence/Learning-Centered Education/Patient-Focused Excellence
- Organizational and Personal Learning
- Valuing Employees and Partners
- Agility
- Focus on the Future
- Manage for Innovation
- Management by Fact
- Public Responsibility and Citizenship
- Focus on Results and Creating Value
- Systems Perspective
Customer-Driven Excellence
Quality and performance are judged by an organization’s customers. Thus, your organization must take into account all product and service features and characteristics and all modes of customer access that contribute value to your customers. Such behavior leads to customer acquisition, satisfaction, preference, referral, retention and loyalty, and to business expansion. Customer-driven excellence has both current and future components: understanding today’s customer desires and anticipating future customer desires and marketplace potential.
Value and satisfaction may be influenced by many factors throughout your customers’ overall experience with your organization. These factors include your organization’s customer relationships, which help to build trust, confidence, and loyalty.
Customer-driven excellence means much more than reducing defects and errors, merely meeting specifications, or reducing complaints. Nevertheless, these factors contribute to your customers’ view of your organization and thus also are important parts of customer-driven excellence. In addition, your organization’s success in recovering from defects, service errors, and mistakes is crucial to retaining customers and building customer relationships.
Customer-driven organizations address not only the product and service characteristics that meet basic customer requirements but also those features and characteristics that differentiate products and services from competing offerings. Such differentiation may be based on new or modified offerings, combinations of product and service offerings, customization of offerings, multiple access mechanisms, rapid response, or special relationships.
Customer-driven excellence is thus a strategic concept. It is directed toward customer retention and loyalty, market share gain, and growth. It demands constant sensitivity to changing and emerging customer and market requirements and to the factors that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty. It demands listening to your customers. It demands anticipating changes in the marketplace. Therefore, customer-driven excellence demands awareness of developments in technology and competitors’ offerings, as well as rapid and flexible responses to customer, environmental, and market changes.
Learning-Centered Education
In order to develop the fullest potential of all students, education organizations need to afford them opportunities to pursue a variety of avenues to success. Learning-centered education supports this goal by placing the focus of education on learning and the real needs of students. Such needs derive from market and citizenship requirements.
A learning-centered organization needs to fully understand these requirements and translate them into appropriate curricula and developmental experiences. For example, changes in technology and in the national and world economies have increased demands on employees to become knowledge workers and problem solvers, keeping pace with the rapid market changes. Most analysts conclude that to prepare students for this work environment, education organizations of all types need to focus more on students’ active learning and on the development of problem-solving skills. Educational offerings also need to be built around effective learning, and effective teaching needs to stress promotion of learning and achievement.
Learning-centered education is a strategic concept that demands constant sensitivity to changing and emerging student, stakeholder, and market requirements and to the factors that drive student learning, satisfaction, and persistence. It demands anticipation of changes in the education market. Therefore, learning-centered education demands awareness of developments in technology and competitors’ programs and offerings, as well as rapid and flexible responses to student, stakeholder, and market changes.
Key characteristics of learning-centered education include the following:
- High developmental expectations and standards are set for all students.
- Faculty understand that students may learn in different ways and at different rates. Student learning rates and styles may differ over time and may vary depending on subject matter. Learning may be influenced by support, guidance, and climate factors, including factors that contribute to or impede learning. Thus, the learning-centered organization needs to maintain a constant search for alternative ways to enhance learning. Also, the organization needs to develop actionable information on individual students that affects their learning.
- A primary emphasis on active learning is provided. This may require the use of a wide range of techniques, materials, and experiences to engage student interest. Techniques, materials, and experiences may be drawn from external sources, such as businesses, community services, or social service organizations.
- Formative assessment is used to measure learning early in the learning process and to tailor learning experiences to individual needs and learning styles.
- Summative assessment is used to measure progress against key, relevant external standards and norms regarding what students should know and should be able to do.
- Students and families are assisted in using self-assessment to chart progress and to clarify goals and gaps.
- There is a focus on key transitions, such as school-to-school and school-to-work.
Patient-Focused Excellence
The delivery of health care services must be patient focused. Quality and performance are the key components in determining patient satisfaction, and all attributes of patient care ¬ delivery (including those not directly related to medical/ clinical services) factor into the judgment of satisfaction and value. Satisfaction and value to patients are key considerations for other customers as well. Patient-focused excellence has both current and future components: understanding today’s patient desires and anticipating future patient desires and health care marketplace offerings.
Value and satisfaction may be influenced by many factors during a patient’s experience participating in health care. Primary among these factors is an expectation that patient safety will be ensured throughout the health care delivery process. Additional factors include a clear understanding of likely health and functional status outcomes, as well as the patient’s relationship with the health care provider and ancillary staff, cost, responsiveness, and continuing care and attention. For many patients, the ability to participate in making decisions about their health care is considered an important factor. This requires patient education for an informed decision. Characteristics that differentiate one provider from another also contribute to the sense of being patient-focused.
Patient-focused excellence is thus a strategic concept. It is directed toward obtaining and retaining patient loyalty, referral of new patients, and market share gain in competitive markets. Patient-focused excellence thus demands rapid and flexible response to emerging patient desires and health care marketplace requirements, and measurement of the factors that drive patient satisfaction. It demands listening to your patients and other customers. Patient-focused excellence also demands awareness of new technology and new modalities for delivery of health care services.
Looking for an affordable meeting space?
VCQ has meeting space available in a convenient location with plenty of parking. Seating for 15 in a “U” shaped design or more if you choose to have it in theatre-style, our meeting space starts at $50 for VCQ Members ($150 for non-VCQ members). Another great reason to become a VCQ Member! Call VCQ at 802-655-1910 for details.
|
