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Blogrige
The Official Baldrige Blog
Roger Arciniega; photo used with permission
During the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program’s 29th Annual Quest for Excellence® Conference this week, national role models in every sector showcased their best practices.
Following is the last of four blogs on the leadership presentations of the 2016 Baldrige Award recipients (in order of publication): Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital (health care), Kindred Nursing and Rehabilitation Center–Mountain Valley (health care), Don Chalmers Ford (small business), and Momentum Group (small business).
Momentum Group
Momentum Group President and CEO Roger Arciniega shared that he joined the small business, which is headquartered in California, in 1998. With an organizational vision “to be the undisputed leader in innovative and sustainable contract textiles,” Momentum Group, he explained, is in the business of developing fabrics used in upholstery for furniture in commercial office settings as well as in health care settings for patients and their families. (Its three key customer groups and markets are business, health care, and hospitality organizations.)
The company’s mission is to “create textiles that inspire and equip our customers to execute great work for their clients. We are individually and collectively committed to superior service and operational excellence,” said Arciniega.
In light of Momentum Group’s consistent growth, Arciniega said, “Really I think our core competency is planning our growth and growing our plan.” The company currently has 157 employees and boasts high retention, with an average employee tenure of 10 years.
It implemented a program of continuous improvement based on the Baldrige framework in 1991, according to Arciniega. In 2015, it earned its state-level Baldrige-based Eureka Award.
According to Arciniega, Momentum Group’s “Secret Sauce” for success is composed of continuous improvement, employees sharing in its success (profit sharing), and a culture of core values. Those core values form the acronym FABRIC, as follows:
- Fairness, honesty and respect in all interactions
- Advancing, developing, and hiring for employee excellence
- Bettering the world around us
- Reducing difficulties experienced by our customers
- Increasing shareholder value
- Continuous improvement of our products and services
Arciniega highlighted several “fundamental” practices of Momentum Group, including behavioral interviewing, six core work processes, five support processes, strategic planning, a focus on organizational learning, and recognition and rewards for employees. Behavioral interviewing, he said, is “based on what people have done in the past rather than their opinions—a key building block to assembling high-performing team.”
Momentum Group’s six core processes include product development, sample management, sales, inventory management, inside sales, and order filling. “These are the processes that customers judge us by,” said Arciniega. The five support processes encompass marketing, credit, information, accounting, technology, and human resources.
As part of its strategic planning process, Momentum Group conducts an annual analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that is holistic, Arciniega said. In relation to Momentum Group’s commitment to being a learning organization, Arciniega said, “a key part of innovation is having people learn new things in a structured way.”
The company has developed an internal Baldrige Award program through which each division writes a 15-page Baldrige application. Momentum developed this process after benchmarking another high-performing company, he said. The applications respond to the Baldrige Excellence Framework’s performance assessment questions and are scored by a third‐party national Baldrige examiner.
Other Momentum Group practices related to being a learning organization include its new-employee orientation, learning plans, company‐wide training, core and support process learning, leadership learning, and employee recognition for continuous improvement. Momentum Group’s comprehensive employee recognition program provides rewards at the company level, across work groups, for action teams, and for individuals.
Arciniega also highlighted Momentum Group’s strong results for engaged employees, loyal customers, and sustainable performance.
For more details, see the Momentum Group profile on the Baldrige website.
