The Sterling Council's Annual Conference
This portion of my site relates to the reader what personal impressions, opinions, and learning I have developed from attending the conference. I have pulled some graphics from the Sterling web page into this page so it will have the same flavor.
I have been asking my self the questions "Why is this the first Sterling Conference I've attended?", and "Why haven't I been serving as a leader in this systematic statewide quality journey?" When answering these questions, I remember all the sacrifices I've made to obtain my Ph.D. For the last seven years of my life I worked feverishly wallowing in and out of desperation to complete the requirements of my degree. This conference made me realize the tremendous amount of work I'm faced with to catch up to where I should be with respect to my role in quality in the State of Florida. With this in mind, there are several goals I will pursue this year.
One will be to write of DOR's quality journey for national publication.
A second will be to become a Sterling Examiner to serve the cause
of quality in Florida.
Another will be to develop a special quality project outside the
USA.
And one other will be to improve my skills in delivering the CPM
program.
I entered my terminal degree program (a professional hiatus) at about the same time John Pieno and the Sterling Council began their work. I was truly amazed at what the many people involved in this effort have created over these past eight years. The excitement, camaraderie, knowledge, expertise, and dedication that the participants brought to the conference was impressive in the least. I was energized and renewed from the experience. Validation and confirmation of what I've learned and what is built into the CPM curriculum was evident every conference moment. The many CPM faces I saw participating in the conference made me proud of the work that my colleagues and I have been doing all these years. I couldn't count all the CPM participants and graduates in attendance, but sure congratulate them on what they do.
I am a very fortunate person to hold a position from which I can affect change in organizations statewide. I deliver training essential to the fundamental understanding of quality and the criteria put forth in the Sterling Challenge. I work with around twenty to thirty participants at a time for four days straight on management topics relating to individual/team/organization issues such as leadership, teams, ethics, etc. In one of the courses I deliver called Level III, I spend about 3.5 hours leading the participants through the Sterling Challenge. They assess themselves and their organization following the Sterling Challenge Self Assessment Document. Sometimes, the participants are members of an organization that has already taken the challenge so they can compare their assessment with their organization's submission. If the organization has obtained a feedback report from a Sterling examination team in response to the challenge, we use it to compare with their own perspective of the sterling criteria as well. This makes for a rich opportunity to understand management issues from all levels.
The connection with the CPM program and the Sterling challenge is very clear to me. Within the CPM curriculum, I help people explore and learn the fundamental concepts of management that are the foundation of any quality program, especially those following the Sterling framework. I believe our two organizations should be working closely as partners to improve public management statewide and I will push for this idea.
On Tuesday morning June 1, John Pieno and Dione Geiger kicked off the opening of the conference with a rousing display of enthusiasm and humor. I could tell they had anticipated this moment all year. I'll always remember John Pieno stating the mission of the Sterling Council. He said
"Our mission is to foster continuous quality improvement to enhance Florida's competitive edge and quality of life."
He stated the mission with such candor and poise as if it were a daily task. But this mission involves millions of people and billions of dollars and its international. Individual control is not in the mix, I assure you. Its a concert of collective vision and cooperative dedication to improving that makes this mission livable. I've pulled the mission and vision statement off the Sterling Web page to show you for what they work.
After John Pieno and Dione Geiger opened the conference and welcomed
all who had arrived, they introduced the opening keynote speaker
Horst Schulze the COO of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company.
Horst Schulze's presentation, "The Second Time is Even Better" was entertaining and inspirational. Teamwork, employee enthusiasm, customer focus, loyalty, process reviews, organizational direction, and an improved bottom line are just a few of the reasons he gave for leading his company through the Baldridge Award process twice. He and several of his colleagues began this company with the heartfelt desire to do something better in this business than they had ever been able to do before. He explained that top hotel chains had, in the past, seemed to hold their market positions on the average of ten years. After a ten year period, these industry leaders would seem to fall out of favor or develop a reputation for being "run down." For these fallen leaders, customer service seemed no longer a priority whereas cutting costs and boosting income was. He talked of a young manager who, over a years period, had increase revenue of his operation to well over a million dollars. Horst said this brought attention to this particular hotel. Horst went and told the manager "you better do better or you will not last with this company". An unusual comment you might think! But what was happening at the hotel was that the manager was withdrawing services to the customers that had brought them there to begin with. Consequently, return visits were beginning to decline. So "taking services away from the customer to increase the bottom line" is what ultimately fuels the decline of market share to those hotels that engage in this practice. Including people in the process of improving services to customers is the practice Horst Schulze encourages and on which he attributes the success of the Ritz Carlton company.
This is a picture of the main assembly during any one of the main speaker events, I don't know which one. There were thousands of participants.
The Conference was organized into workshop sessions, informal networking, table top discussions/lunches, keynote speakers, exhibit hall time, and other peripheral sessions.
The workshops I attended were:
"Managing Training Effectiveness"
"The Internet: Changing The Way We Work and Live"
"The Human Side Of Quality"
"Quality Management In Florida State Government"
"The Future Of Quality Initiative In The Public
Sector"
(I purchased the tapes
of these and other sessions.)
This is a picture from a typical workshop.
I also participated in the table top discussion of the Department of Corrections' team showcase on improving the probation process. Linda Mills(CPM) and Douglas Rickles shared their experiences of applying the Sterling criteria to their work and how they improved the process. We talked with each other about all the things we were individually doing to improve quality within our own organizations. This is a picture of me sitting at one of the table top discussions. Notice how happy I look.
The other keynote speakers were:
Colleen Kettenhofen(Solutions Training International), Greg Watson(BSS,
Inc.), Michael Dreikorn(QA and Product Integrity), Sister Mary Jean Ryan(SSM
Health Care), and Joel Barker(Infinity Limited).
I also participated in the post Conference focus group to help improve next year's conference.
There was plenty of opportunity to network during breaks and around lunch and breakfast time. This is a picture of the hallway outside of the workshops where most of the real learning of the conference took place.
under progress. Check back again soon.