What is your Quest?

I am excited to once again gain and share inspiration from the Quest for Excellence conference.

Each year, leaders gather to share and learn about what creates and sustains organizational excellence. National Baldrige award recipients such as:

• healthcare organization Southcentral Foundation,
• service stars like the Ritz-Carlton,
• educational trailblazers like UW-Stout,
• communities like the County of San Diego, and
• change-makers across industries and communities

generously share their approaches, their learnings, and their results.

I have had the opportunity to be a part of Quest spanning two decades. I recall the electric feeling at my first Quest not long after I had been selected to lead Rutland Regional’s journey to excellence. We chose two complementary frameworks to guide our transformation as an organization — with the Baldrige framework for Performance Excellence at the core.  Tom Huebner (now retired CEO of RRMC) and I attended Quest together and walked away with numerous systematic approaches for our leadership system redesign efforts. I have returned over ten times since each time with new connections, new insights, and proven approaches to improve organizational performance.

I have spent the better part of two decades now working with leaders, organizations and communities who are seeking to create their excellence advantage. Most don’t formally adopt a framework like Baldrige, yet it is always lingering not far below the surface of my work. In my judgment, the questions posed in the Baldrige criteria can propel a leadership team forward. The criteria ask a leadership group to consider: How do they lead? How do they set their strategic direction? How do they create an environment of high performance? How do they determine which measures are key? And how do they use data, information and analysis to determine priorities for improvement and action? What results do they have to show to demonstrate their success, long term viability, and resilience?

I am thrilled also to see how the Communities of Excellence model has taken off over the past few years, building a community-level model for excellence grounded in the same principles of excellence.

Thanks to each of the role model organizations for sharing so generously through Quest and in your 50-page summaries. Learning across sectors, benchmarking performance, and identifying leading practices. It is always inspiring!

If you’d like to receive these Inspirations in your inbox every other week, you can subscribe to Kathy’s Excellence Advantage Inspirations Newsletter.
Kathy Letendre, President and Founder of Letendre & Associates, advises organizations and leaders to create their excellence advantage.
Contact Kathy by phone or text at 802-779-4315 or via email.