The Official Baldrige Blog
In case you missed it, on August 19, 2019, the Business Roundtable released a statement on the purpose of a corporation. This statement is probably overdue by at least a decade or two; however, it is still worthy of appreciation, as it acknowledges what many good corporations already practice and recognizes the importance of creating value for all key stakeholders, rather than focusing just on quarterly financial returns and stockholder earnings. The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and many others published articles about the change.
If you, your leadership, and/or your board of directors would like a proven, nonprescriptive tool to help you implement such an “enlightened” approach to leading, managing, and improving your organization, you are in luck!
Baldrige has been promoting and enabling such a perspective for many years. In fact, more than a dozen of the organizations whose CEO’s signed the statement have used the Baldrige framework, and each of the fundamental commitments included in the statement (on the left below) reflects a core value imbedded within the Baldrige Excellence Framework (on the right bolded):
Best of all, Baldrige isn’t intended to be something you do in addition to what you do. Rather, it is about improving how you do what you do, to ensure that those actions and practices are effective at accomplishing their intended purpose while also supporting and enabling optimal performance across the entire organization.
To see and learn from role-model organizations that truly want to help your organization improve, check out the Baldrige Award recipients. I encourage you to attend the Baldrige Fall Conference, our annual Quest for Excellence® conference next spring , or other opportunities throughout the year where you can engage with and learn from a variety of different organizations and their leaders.
The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) is a public-private partnership with the purpose of improving the performance and sustainability of organizations of all kinds. Through collaboration and partnership with the business community, BPEP maintains a globally recognized and emulated framework for organization-wide excellence, identifies role-model organizations through the Baldrige Award, provides educational offerings, and shares best practices from the award recipients.
The Baldrige Excellence Framework has empowered organizations to accomplish their missions, improve results, and become more competitive. It includes the Criteria for Performance Excellence, core values and concepts, and guidelines for evaluating your processes and results.
Available versions: Business/Nonprofit, Education, and Health Care
Bob, thanks for sharing the business round table statement of purpose.
It’s amazing how 14 pages of top executives agree on more than quarterly profits and personal gain.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if all of those CEO’s signing their shared purpose document actually adopted the Performance excellence framework and (like ISO organizations) demand their suppliers do as well.