PlantSuccess Newsletter
Volume I, Issue 17
12/12/01
Dear Subscriber:
The PlantSuccess
Newsletter was launched in July to help provide information regarding a unique
conference, PlantSuccess, to a broad range of industry leaders. The Newsletter
has done that job well and, in addition, has built a following of readers who
welcome the topics and articles selected. This is great; we hope to do more and
ask for your assistance.
We have prepared
a very brief survey that asks a few questions about the Newsletter, subject
matter that can be presented and provides space for comments. Your views are
important to us and we hope you will give us less than the minute required to
respond. We will share the results next issue. Of course, name and e-mail
address are optional.
Please click
here to respond; the survey will bring you back to the Newsletter.
Many are glad to
reach the end of one year if only to have a clean slate to begin the next. This
year has presented some very unique challenges to all of us and I believe we
are winning the war against terrorism. We can’t afford to lose this one.
Regardless of
how this year 2001 has been for you, I think 2002 will be better for all of us.
Our very best wishes to all of you for the holidays and the New Year.
******************
Current Links
*******************
The key to the successful
implementation of any technology or business practice is leadership. All of us
have seen success when leadership was applied and the failure when it wasn’t.
Michael Useem, professor of management at Wharton and director of the
university’s Center for Leadership and Change, has written a book on a subject
important to all of us and includes many current examples. Leading Up:
How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win, describes effective leadership,
including what it takes to be a No. 2. READ
FULL STORY
Author Susan Cantrell shares
her findings in research of a common dilemma. Managers are often tasked with
what seems like a paradox: minimize the costs associated with workplace design,
information technology, and organizational design, but also attract, retain,
and improve the effectiveness of employees. From the Latest Thinking column of Refractions,
Accenture’s Institute for Strategic Change, READ
RESEARCH NOTE
“No company can be the best
at everything. Choose one area of expertise on which to focus and spend your IT
budget support it.” This is the subject of a good article by Fred Crawford and
Bill Domeika in a new publication, Optimize, and a good idea for
the effective use of all resources. READ FULL STORY
Baldrige
National Quality Program
By anyone’s measure, the
criterion for performance excellence includes a broad range of topics. The
criteria used to determine the annual winners of the Baldrige National Quality
Program are:
Visionary Leadership
A focus on customer and
market knowledge and on customer satisfaction and relationships
High performance work
systems and a focus on employee education and development
Clearly designed and
well-managed process for product and services delivery
Strong financial and market
results
Over its 14-year history,
the Criteria for Performance Excellence have evolved significantly toward
comprehensive coverage of strategy-driven performance and alignment of
performance systems to adapt to ever-changing conditions.
This seems to be working;
the "Baldrige Index", a fictitious stock fund comprised of
publicly-traded US companies that have received the Malcolm Baldrige National
Quality Award, has consistently and substantially performed better than the
S&P 500 index for the past several years. READ
CRITERIA FOR PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE
This Newsletter generates a
substantial number of visits to our website, we welcome the interest and the
access to previous issues of the Newsletter which are available there. If you'd
like to share this newsletter with a colleague, just forward a copy.
Subscriptions and cancellations can be made by sending a request to Carl.Howk@PlantSuccess.com
Full links to Volume I, Issue 17 Newsletter articles:
1.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/articles.cfm?catid=2&articleid=472
3.
http://www.optimizemag.com/issue/002/customer.htm
4.
http://www.quality.nist.gov/PDF_files/Issue_Sheet_Model.pdf