Business Excellence Models

Business Excellence Models
DR. ABDULRAhman ALJAMOUSS

Business Excellence is often described as outstanding practices in managing the organisation and achieving results, all based on a set of fundamental concepts or values. These practices have evolved into models for how a world class organisation should operate.

Quality VS. Excellence

I was reading through a company’s strategic plan over the weekend and noticed that they had made the decision to shift from a “quality focus” to an “excellence focus”. This made me wonder what the difference is, and why a company might want to make such a change in its strategy.

According to ISO 8402, quality is the “totality of characteristics of an entity that bear upon its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.” In a quality-driven environment, an organization will improve the characteristics of its processes, products, and people — to eventually satisfy the stated and implied needs of its stakeholders (presumably customer, the workforce, and even society if social responsibility is a priority.)

The Nine Principles of Excellence

Principle 1: Commit to Excellence. ...
Principle 2: Measure the Important Things. ...
Principle 3: Build a Culture Around Service. ...
Principle 4: Develop Leaders to Develop People. ...
Principle 5: Focus on Employee Engagement. ...
Principle 6: Be Accountable. ...
Principle 7: Align Behaviors with Goals and Values. ...
Principle 8: Communicate at All Levels People.
PRINCIPLE 9: Recognize and Reward Success Value.

Characteristics of Management Excellence

Management Excellence starts with values.
Learning and continuous improvement drive the daily work.
Robust debate leads to unified actions.
Strategy is everyone's business.
Time travel is required.
The Field-of-View alternates between the immediate scene and far away sectors and technologies. .
Life in this organisation is a verb phrase.
No lip service allowed for employee or volunteer development.
The functions exist to support the organisation and strategy, not themselves.
Financial results are viewed as important outcomes of the organisation's collective actions.
The pursuit of greatness is the secret sauce that drives every participant.

The EFQM Model

The EFQM Model is a globally recognised management framework that supports organisations in managing change and improving performance.

The EFQM Model structure is based on the simple but powerful logic of asking three questions:

WHY: “Why” does this organisation exist? What purpose does it fulfil? Why this particular Strategy… DIRECTION
HOW: “How” does it intend to deliver on its Purpose and its Strategy…EXECUTION
WHAT: “What” has it actually achieved to date? “What” does it intend to achieve tomorrow… RESULTS

Why should I use the EFQM Model?

Since its inception, the EFQM Model has provided a blueprint for organisations across and beyond Europe to develop a culture of improvement and innovation.

If you want to define a strong purpose, inspire leaders at every level and create a culture committed to driving performance, while remaining agile, adaptive and able to evolve for the future, then the EFQM Model is for you.

IT HELPS DEFINE YOUR PURPOSE

Purpose is the lifeblood of any organisation. Without it, there is no reason to serve. The EFQM Model places an unparalleled emphasis on the importance of purpose, vision and agile strategies to organisations if they are to create sustainable value.

IT HELPS FORGE STRONG LEADERS

Effective leadership keeps an organisation true to its purpose and vision, which is why the EFQM Model advocates a ‘leaders at every level’ approach to ensure strong decision-making, collaboration and teamwork in every team and every project.

IT HELPS ADDRESS UNIQUE ORGANISATIONAL CHALLENGES

EFQM understands that all organisations are different and there is no one size fits all approach to transformation. That’s why the EFQM Model was built from the ground up to be both adaptive to unique organisational obstacles and flexible enough to deliver on its promise of performance gains.

IT HELPS CREATE YOUR CULTURE

The EFQM Model is an innovative culture creator, valuing core quality beliefs and shared goals at the heart of organisations whilst allowing them to remain connected and committed to their vision.

IT HELPS TRANSFORM YOUR ORGANISATION

Transformation takes time, and the EFQM Model supplies a tried and tested framework to make the process of landing effective change as smooth and pain-free as possible.

IT HELPS FORECAST THE FUTURE

The EFQM Model has been designed from years of experience in changing markets to understand the benefits of organisational analysis, future forecasting and predictive intelligence in driving true transformation.

IT HELPS FOSTER AGILE PRACTICES

To be agile amid emerging threats is the marker of an effective organisation. The EFQM Model provides organisational analysis and insight to lead a safe path to progress and transformation.

The EFQM Excellence Model was introduced at the beginning of 1992 as the framework for assessing applications for The European Quality Award. It is a widely used organisational framework in Europe and has become the basis for a series of national and regional Quality Awards. The EFQM model's is used as a management system that encourages the discipline of organisational self-assessment (http://base-uk.org/knowledge/european-foundation-quality-management-efqm).

The EFQM Excellence Model is a practical tool to help organisations to do this by measuring where they are on the path to Excellence; helping them understand the gaps; and stimulating solutions. It is applicable to organisation irrespective of size and structure, and sector. Self-assessment has wide applicability to organisations large and small, in the public as well as the private sectors. The outputs from self-assessment can be used as part of the business planning process and the model itself can be used as a basis for operational and project review (http://base-uk.org/knowledge/european-foundation-quality-management-efqm).

The EFQM Model is a non-prescriptive framework that recognises there are many approaches to achieving sustainable excellence. Within this approach there are some fundamental concepts which underpin the EFQM model. However, these concepts are not fixed. It is accepted that they will change overtime as excellent organisations develop and improve. Current indicative concepts are listed below:

Results Orientation - Excellence is achieving results that impress all the organisation's stakeholders.
Customer Focus - Excellence is creating sustainable customer value.
Leadership & Constancy of Purpose - Excellence is visionary and inspirational leadership, coupled with purpose.
Management by Processes & Facts - Excellence is managing the organisation through a set of interdependent and interrelated systems, processes and facts.
People Development & Involvement - Excellence is maximising the contribution of employees through their development and involvement.
Continuous Learning, Innovation & Improvement - Excellence is challenging the status quo and effecting change by using learning to create innovation and improvement opportunities.
Partnership Development - Excellence is developing and maintaining value-adding partnerships.
Corporate Social Responsibility - Excellence is exceeding the minimum regulatory framework in which the organisation operates and to strive to understand and respond to the expectations of their stakeholders in society (http://base-uk.org/knowledge/european-foundation-quality-management-efqm).

The framework of the EFQM Excellence Model is based on nine criteria. Five of these are Enablers' and four are 'Results'. The 'Enabler' criteria cover what an organisation does. The 'Results' criteria cover what an organisation achieves. Results' are caused by 'Enablers' and feedback from 'Results' help to improve 'Enablers'.

The EFQM 2013 Model

This quality management model aims at sustainable excellence in which quality, efficiency and sustainability are the key elements. The basis of the EFQM Model consists of the Total Quality Management (TQM) concept. It consists of a universal framework of concepts, thus enabling organizations to share information in an effective way, irrespective of the different sectors, cultures and life stages in which they are located.

Organizations can thus take other organizations as a model, so that they obtain insight into how far they meet the image of a high-quality organization. The EFQM consists of nine criteria that are subdivided into five Enablers and four Results:

The five organizational areas indicate how these objectives can be achieved: