What Would Malcolm Baldrige Do?

Malcolm Baldrige was the former Department of Commerce Secretary who established criteria which is used extensively by public and private sector organizations to improve productivity and performance excellence.

The Doyle Department of Administration relies heavily on the criteria in their strategic planning management training documents, so I wanted to take a closer look at the Baldrige criteria in light of recent revelations about the Doyle Administrations’ ACE initiative.

Leadership—examines how senior executives guide the organization and how the organization addresses its responsibilities to the public and practices good citizenship.

Let’s see here, Gina Frank Reese denies ever discussing the Adelman contract with a panelist from the UW, DOA continues to stall on open records to the RPW, and Matt Miszewski is so busy traveling around the country telling everyone how great our ACE initiative is that other agencies have to wait a month or more to get their questions answered.

Strategic planning—Examines how the organization sets strategic directions and how it determines key action plans.

Here' s the plan. Was it followed?

Customer and market focus—.Examines how the organization determines requirements and expectations of customers and markets; builds relationships with customers; and acquires, satisfies, and retains customers

Oops, looks like DOA Administrator Pat Farley forgot who the customer was when he chewed out DOT Budget Director, Casey Newman for questioning the Silver Oak Solution Contract and “creating a public document.” Way to accept customer input., Mr. Farley.

Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management—Examines the management, effective use, analysis, and improvement of data and information to support key organization processes and the organization’s performance management system.

Looks like DOA was relying on ‘fuzzy math” when they calculated the projected savings associated with the Silver Oak Solutions contract. According to DOA Executive Assistant Sean Dilweg, the agency didn’t know what numbers to use so they relied on numbers provided by the vendor. Bad move, especially when you consider how Silver Oak Solutions cooked the numbers in New Mexico. Perhaps they should have asked their own budget shop to analyze this more carefully.

Human resource focus—Examines how the organization enables its workforce to develop its full potential and how the workforce is aligned with the organization’s objectives.

Well, the top dogs at DOA managed to align the workforce with the organization’s objectives with respect to the Adelman contract. It’s too bad they had to fracture a law or two to do it.

Process management—Examines aspects of how key production/delivery and support processes are designed, managed, and improved.

I think it’s safe to say that there was a breakdown in process management when it came to the state’s failed email consolidation program.

Business results—Examines the organization’s performance and improvement in its key business areas: customer satisfaction, financial and marketplace performance, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operational performance, and governance and social responsibility. The category also examines how the organization performs relative to competitors.

If business results are so important, why didn’t DOA benchmark these prices with surrounding states and why did Governor Doyle veto legislative oversight of the ACE initiative in the biennial budget?