A Map for Your Journey to Leadership Excellence

Pictured above: Debbie Collard, Seasons Leadership co-founder, and E. David Spong, our resident seasoned leader, in between former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Don Evans and the former President of the United States George W. Bush, receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for service.

It can be difficult as a leader to know where to start on a journey to excellence. You may ask yourself: “Where are the biggest pain points? Where will I get the most benefit from investing my time and energy? Or how do I know what’s most important and impactful?” Each of these are great questions. But what if you had a map for your journey to excellence? You do! And you may not even be aware of it.

Last week I received an email from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program announcing a free business resource called, “The Foundations for a Successful Business.” I just had to share it with the Seasons Leadership community: www.nist.gov/baldrige/self-assessing/improvement-tools/foundations-successful-business

Why Baldrige? Let me provide some background. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a long-time supporter of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. I implemented the performance excellence framework in multiple organizations, resulting in several state and international awards, twice including the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Nation’s highest honor for performance excellence, once in manufacturing and once in service. I also served as an examiner and senior examiner for the program and served on the Baldrige Foundation board of directors for 15 years and was the first female chair of the board.

Because of all this exposure and involvement with the Baldrige Program, I believe in the Baldrige approach to excellence. Also, there are decades of proven results in any type of business to back that belief. You can see for yourself at www.nist.gov/baldrige.

With our Seasons Leadership Vision to make excellent leadership the world-wide standard and our Mission to inspire and partner with individuals, teams and organizations to increase and accelerate leadership excellence, we are always on the lookout for things that will help us realize our vision and mission. Because we believe in leadership excellence, we are always looking for tools that will help increase and accelerate that excellence.

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program provides several tools that can help an organization get started and advance on their own journey to excellence, including the Baldrige Excellence Framework ® and the Baldrige Excellence Builder ®. Both of these tools can help a business be successful at any stage; new or well-established, growing, or transforming.

The new tool, Foundations for a Successful Business, is based on the Baldrige Framework and introduces the basic elements for sustaining, growing, and managing an organization. I am so excited about this because it provides a workbook-like set of questions for leaders to ponder in an easy-to-use online format. Users can also easily navigate to the areas of the framework they are most interested in assessing and improving (i.e., leadership, strategy, etc.). This tool makes it so easy to figure out where to focus when starting on your journey to excellence. Helpful hint: Leadership is always a great starting point.

We believe in helping to spread Leadership Excellence world-wide and this free tool can help any business get started on their journey to excellence. I encourage you to check it out and get started today! What are you waiting for?

Would you like to learn more about how leadership excellence can help you or your business? Contact us today!

Get more exclusive advice from our Resident Seasoned Leader E. David Spong – also a two-time Baldrige Award leader:

Balancing Business Needs with Loyalty- Patreon Exclusive!

Knowing Your Priority-Patreon Exclusive!

Making Practicing Gratitude a Habit-Patreon Exclusive!

Want to learn more about Baldrige? Get the book written by E. David Spong and Debbie Collard that describes their Baldrige Journey: “The Making of a World-Class Organization.”

Debbie Collard has 30+ years of leadership experience. She served on the National Baldrige Foundation Board of Directors for 15 years, including as the first female Chair of the Board. She is an iPEC- and ICF-Certified Professional Coach and co-author of The Making of a World- Class Organization, a practical guide for leaders to engage employees and increase profitability. debbiecollard.com

Join Our Community

Thank you for joining our community!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Most Recent Posts

See All

Fall reflections are running through my mind

Fall means running Cross Country. This sport has shaped so many of my fall seasons of life. First as a student athlete and now as a coach. This sport, which is all about racing across varied terrain, takes on an almost mythical quality for me and I suspect many other runners that are drawn to this open-air competition.

Read More

Strong leaders assert agency

This summer, I've been reflecting on the concept of agency because my coaching clients have been talking about it. People say things like, “I could never do that!” or “I’m burning out, my boss doesn’t see all that I do!”

Read More

Reboot your recharge routine

Debbie's previous blog "recharge your leadership batteries" offers some timely insights to help you reboot your own practice of "me time." She shares this important reminder that inspires me to take time for myself, "by taking time off not only was I benefiting, but I was giving someone else the opportunity to stretch and grow and show themselves and others what they could do."

Read More

Resources

Are you wanting to learn more before you dive in? We created these tools to help support your growth and success. Whether you join our yearlong program or simply use these resources on your own, we're honored to be a part of your ongoing development.

Bad Bosses

While there are definitely bad bosses out there, luckily most bosses want to be good bosses and to do the right things. How would you rate yourself as a boss?

Download

Community & Relationships

When we develop relationships, we build community. To do this intentionally and with purpose results in a conscious community that can nurture each other and “rise” together. That’s why it is important!

Download

Leadership & Principles

Do you know what your values are? Do you have an explicit set of operating principles for your team or organization? If not, it is never too late to get started!

Download

Relationship Matrix

Even if nurturing relationships is easy for you, to successfully network, one helpful practice is to create a “Relationship Matrix.” The matrix is a list of people that you want to build and nurture a relationship in business with.

Download

Goal Setting

Are you the person who intends to accomplish a goal next year but “next year” keeps sliding to … the next year? We have a better way to set you up for success!

Download