Number of quality awards have been instituted the world over like MBNQA in USA, EQA in European countries, Deming Prize in Japan being the most prominent and other parts of the world following the suit, with award criteria based on the popular ones mentioned above. The companies competing for the award are invariably required to make and submit the application document as per the requirements of award criteria.
Different companies adopt different methodologies to prepare the application document for the award. These methods range from use of different teams to write different criteria or one team to write all the criteria or even a single person or a small group of persons delegated to do the job or to involve the senior management team also in the exercise or even leaving the responsibility to leaders in each area to prepare the write-up for relevant criteria like top management team working exclusively on leadership criteria and so on so forth.
Whatever way a company approaches the issue of writing the application document for the award, the basic purpose of application submission must be understood with clarity by the people responsible. Generally companies participate in the award competition to showcase their excellence in enterprise management or to get a realistic feedback on the practices of the company. In the former case the company intends to win the award and thus create an image of being a role model in the industry, where as in the later case the company wants to strengthen its management systems and improve its performance. But the common element in the presentation of the application document remains the same – writing an assessor friendly application.
Preparing an application document is a project – not just another activity. It must be planned to perfection and scheduled meticulously with a definite start and end date, milestones and reviews. Team approach works the best and for best results, have people from top echelon lead the team and take responsibility for disseminating the contents of the application document throughout the company. The application process should typically start with kick-off meeting by the CEO, along with his executive team and person responsible for TQM initiatives or the like, where a tentative roadmap for the project may be finalized. The roadmap may deal with following issues:
- Project purpose, target dates, milestones
- Formation of teams
- Educating senior leadership especially those who are going to lead the respective teams, on the model
- Workshop / team work
- Identify major themes and strengths
- Prepare organizational profile
- Additional data collection
- One or two revisions of the draft
- Site visit preparation & Implement improvements
Purpose of application submission is of paramount importance as it builds the mindset of the teams who take on the mantle for preparing the application document. It is CEO’s responsibility to make the point clear. It is generally found that depending upon where the emphasis lay (recognition or discovering blind spots), there is a shift in the attitude of application writing teams, which may genuinely effect how the not-so-great strengths of the company are viewed and presented. At this stage a common understanding of the general theme and strengths of the company that need to be highlighted are gained.
The next important step is composition of the teams. The challenge here is to bring together a team of committed, knowledgeable and positive people together who work in the areas that are relevant to the criteria they are going to make the information ready for. It is important that senior manager who is leading a particular team must have authority over most of the areas that address the criteria. For example VP(HR), may lead the team that prepares the people criteria. Also it is easier to build cause and effect kind of relationship between enablers and results if the related enabler and results criteria are prepared by the same team. For example people and people results criteria can be prepared by the same team or policy and strategy and key performance results criteria are handled by the same team.
Next comes the education of senior managers – especially those who are leading the team and may also include the whole top team. This is very important in bringing about common understanding of the areas to address for each criteria. This opportunity can also be used to draw the storyline of organizational profile. The challenges, responses, strengths and industry specifics can be discussed and finalized, so that everyone is focused around the common themes and a cohesive storyline is developed across the application document. Once common understanding of the areas to be addressed for each sub-criteria is reached at, it is only a matter of how to gather required information. This can be done through application writing workshops, where teams come with prior preparation and debate various points before the information on the first draft is made ready and requirement of any additional information is identified. Workshop approach makes the exercise very focused, at the end of which the teams may present their work to the team of top management for their review. Yet another common way is to let the teams work at their own pace, time and place and come out with presentation to top management team as per the schedule. While writing the enablers part, the teams must bring out the importance of the practice in view of the policy & strategy of the company and desired results. Also the team must explain how systematically the practice is adopted in the company and how the practice has been modified over the years and the benefits thereof. All this helps the assessors in understanding business perspective of the company and the rationale of how the things get done in the company. Similarly for results criteria, identify all the parameters, indicators and metrics that the sub-criteria calls for. Collect data on performance levels, targets, trends, and benchmarks. Explain how the result is important in the game plan of the company, authenticity of the benchmarks and short analysis of trends and how such a performance could be achieved. More importantly present segmented results to prove that results for all important areas have been covered. For easy understanding present results in clear visuals. And finally, since there is a limit on the number of pages, be brief and clear and the page allocation can be by the weightage for each criteria.
Team work for collecting information and putting in the application document is the phase of discovery where teams learn about gaps in their practices and team leaders with authority can make it a point to bridge those gaps even before the site visit by the assessors.
Top management reviews during the application document preparation phase can be used by respective team leaders not only to refine the document but more importantly to create a sense of need among the top team to provide further thrust on bridging the gaps identified during application preparation. After the application is submitted the focus of team leaders ideally must shift to disseminating the contents among the people responsible for different processes and provide renewed thrust on improvements as discovered during application preparation.
Application writing experience is like a refresher course for team members for understanding their company’s operations and discovering the practices and inadequacy of performance indicators. It is an accepted fact that assessment against award criteria is a great instrument for improvement but what people should realize is that preparation of application document can itself be an instrument for identifying and driving improvements in the company.
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