Excellence Foresight with Nancy Nouaimeh

The Global OE Index: Measuring Organizational Excellence with Dawn Ringrose

• Season 3 • Episode 7

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What makes some organizations excel while others struggle? The answer lies in understanding and implementing a proven framework for organizational excellence.

Dawn Ringrose, principal of Organizational Excellence Specialist Canada, takes us on a fascinating journey through her groundbreaking work on the Global Index for Organizational Excellence. This first-of-its-kind research project has gathered insights from approximately 4,000 organizations worldwide to reveal the current state of excellence across industries, sectors, and regions.

The Global Index offers unprecedented visibility into organizational performance patterns, showing that most organizations globally have made a "good start" in implementing excellence practices while rating themselves slightly higher on cultural principles. What's particularly striking is the regional variation - while the Middle East and Africa demonstrate growing passion for excellence frameworks, North America appears to be losing ground despite being among the pioneers in this field.

Dawn shares a practical three-step approach for organizations looking to improve: assess your organization against an excellence model, benchmark against others using the Global Index, and learn from role model organizations that have earned excellence awards. This systematic process provides a clear roadmap for continuous improvement while accommodating various methodologies like ISO standards, Lean, and Six Sigma within a comprehensive framework.

Perhaps most valuable is Dawn's insight that excellence isn't about choosing between competing management systems - it's about embracing principles and practices common to high-performing organizations. The excellence framework provides a validated formula for success that can be tailored to organizations of any size or industry sector.

Join us for this illuminating conversation that will challenge your thinking about organizational performance and provide practical guidance for your excellence journey. Connect with Dawn to discover how the Global Index can help your organization achieve higher performance standards in today's competitive landscape.

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Nancy Nouaimeh:

Hello and welcome back to the Excellence Foresight Podcast, the space where we explore strategies, insights and practical tools to drive meaningful change in organizations and support leaders in their journey. I'm your host, nancy Noemi, and today I'm honored to have Don Ringrose, a friend, an expert in organizational excellence and a thought leader on performance benchmarking. Welcome Dawn. Dawn is the principal of Organizational Excellence Specialist Canada and will be sharing the organizational excellence framework that she had developed and the global index for organizational excellence associated to it, its impact on organization and how it can guide them to achieve high standard. Don, thank you very much for being with us me, here today. Would you like to share something else about yourself with our audience before we start?

Dawn Ringrose:

You know I'll just give people a quick little snapshot here I've been involved with excellence models since they were first introduced in the late 80s, early 1990s, and it's been an area that's really captivated my interest and I'm very passionate about it. So I'm very pleased to speak with you about the work that I've been doing today about the work that I've been doing today.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Excellent, and it's wonderful to have you here on the podcast, dawn and I know we have a lot of stories to share with our audience today. So, to begin, can you tell us a little bit about the Global Index for Organizational Excellence? What is it and how did it come about?

Dawn Ringrose:

Well, it came about back in 2015. Well, it came about back in 2015. I am a member of the Organizational Excellence Technical Committee at the Quality Management Division of ASQ, and on that committee are a lot of representatives around the world that are affiliated with various excellence models, and my model that I had developed was back in 2010. I had the idea to put together all the definitions that we find in all of the excellence models, the leading excellence models in particular, and I wanted to put everything in one place. So we had definitions of the principles, the practices, the measures, and then what I did was I added to that which to me was a very big gap in the literature, was implementation guidelines that we use as seasoned professionals, and along with that publication, I developed a turnkey toolkit to assist with implementation, and one of the items in the turnkey toolkit was an automated assessment and reporting system.

Dawn Ringrose:

And so there was an individual on the Organizational Excellence Technical Committee. We were discussing what we could do as a team, and there was an individual there that said, hey, why don't we use your assessment tool to do this study? You know that had this research that had never been done before. And I said yes, and I must say that when I look back on that now, I didn't know what I was getting myself into, because it was a voluntary project and it ended up being quite a bit more work than I had ever imagined. But the work has been so rewarding because it's been so insightful and interesting, and I continue to be amazed at the data and information that that we've gathered to reveal what the current state of excellence is in the world by size, industry, sector, region and country. And perhaps a unique feature of this, really in a lot of respects, is that respondents completing the assessment have varying levels of awareness about excellence models Some have never heard of them, right through to those that are using them.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I think this is, I mean, wonderful. I've seen the kit, I've seen the global index and the results done and I think there's a lot to learn from and it's something I mean really encourage you to continue doing what you're doing. I think it's been a great journey and there's a lot that you can give to that. So, if I can go back a little bit to the Global Index and you mentioned that you took a lot of definitions and a lot of concepts and put them into the framework and then you came up with the Global Index. What does make the Global Index unique compared to other performance benchmarking tools out there?

Dawn Ringrose:

Well, it's absolutely unique in that this sort of work has never been done before.

Dawn Ringrose:

You know, in the excellence field a lot of work has been done to validate that excellence models work, and when you implement the practices you develop a culture committed to excellence and you go on to achieve results across a balanced system of measurement.

Dawn Ringrose:

So that's been nailed down and we've got lots of wonderful role models and lots of wonderful research that's been done around the world about that. But no one in the last few decades has ever asked the question of what is the current state of excellence of organizations in general out there. And so this is what this study has done, and it's revealed that and I'm very confident now, given the number of respondents, that we've got a pretty clear picture what the current state of excellence is by all of these principles and these practices, and we've got a good handle on the extent to which organizations have have got a culture characterized by the principles and have to the extent to which they've implemented the practices and are using the measures and so forth yeah, I liked your mentioning culture and I think there's a lot we don't know about the culture of organization, the culture of excellence, and what makes that some organizations succeed and others not.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

So I want to maybe, if you can just allow us a little bit and give us some data around the current state of global I mean organizational excellence now.

Dawn Ringrose:

Well, we've got, you know, we've got two rating scales that we use For the principles that describe a culture committed to excellence. We're using a subjective scale, and so when respondents take a look at the extent to which they've got these principles that are part of their culture, it's like a gut feel, you know, from low, medium to high. And when we look at the practices that are in all the key management areas, here we're asking for considerably more detail because we're using an objective scale, and that requires the respondent to think about each practice and the approach they're using, the extent to which it's deployed, whether or not they're getting good results, and uh, and so it's a much more objective scale, and so we're getting, you know a much, you know a different rating and we've got, um, again you know a rating scale that goes from just beginning to good start, to doing well, to high performance. And then we've, in addition to the ratings, we've got the open-ended comments that they provide as well, and this is where there's an absolute wealth of data.

Dawn Ringrose:

If I was to print all those open-ended comments out, I'd probably have about 600 pages. So it's to me that's where it's. We've got some very interesting information, and it really gives us the rationale for the ratings and helps us better understand. So I think that for the most part around the world the index, if we're looking at an overall average, I think we'll see that organizations are off to a good start. You know, most organizations are in the good start range there for the key management areas but on the principles they've rated themselves a little bit higher and they've got themselves in the medium. You know medium, high range.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Okay, that's interesting to know.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I think we still have a lot to do. Organizations have still a lot to do when it comes to excellence, so it's a journey, like we say right. So they need to start somewhere, but once they start, they need to be able to keep progressing, and I think having a benchmarking tool will allow them to see where they are and see how to plan for the future and keep improving, which is, I think, it's a great thing to do. So my follow-up question here is based on your experience how can organizations align their strategic objectives with their performance improvement efforts through the use of the assessment, and what metrics they should be having in place and what's important around using the right metrics?

Dawn Ringrose:

Well, that's a really good question. You know, when an organization comes up with their strategic plan, you know it's driven by the vision of what they want to become in the future and is directly aligned with other things in the model, such as the business plan, the human resource plan, the work processes that people undertake, the measurements that are used to provide feedback on performance, and so you'll see that. You'll see that through the principle of alignment. You'll see that through the principle of alignment, You'll see how everything cascades from the strategic plan throughout the organization and then feedback is provided by the that those are the quality of the product or service, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and then financial measures to provide feedback on performance. Now you can have a few more measures if you're a larger size organization and you can choose from the ones that we have in the Organizational Excellence Framework publication and in Chapter 9. These are good measures to use because they're used around the world and be great for benchmarking or learning from others or just good feedback for your organization. So you choose the ones that are most relevant for your organization. So you choose the ones that are most relevant for your organization, and one thing that leaders should really be conscious of when they're using an excellence model is the system that it provides.

Dawn Ringrose:

And it's the system of these principles and practices that are interrelated and interconnected and help you get your organization from where it is today to where you want it to be tomorrow.

Dawn Ringrose:

And there's a document on the homepage of our website called interrelationships and you can see exactly what these are and it shows you the touch points between the principles and the practices. So, in other words, the influence that certain practices have on the principles the principles such as, let's say, focus on the customer. You know what practices are directly related to that, and so you can see the influence that the practices have on the principles, and so you know what to work on. You know if you've got low ratings in a particular area. You'll find the direct relationships between the practices themselves. So, in other words, we know that the business plan is very related to the strategic plan and so forth. So this whole concept of interrelationships is really, really important because it gives you an appreciation of the system, and that system has got to be working really well together for the organization to perform well. So that's a concept I think it's important to embed in your organization and in the minds of leadership.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Excellent. So do you have any specific advice you would like to give leaders who would like to maybe use the Global Index and do the assessment on? How would that help them in making meaningful changes in their organization?

Dawn Ringrose:

leaders to do is involve and engage all of their employees, or at least a segment of their employees. That can then transfer knowledge to the other employees. But in the ideal circumstance, what we like to do is train people about excellence so that they know what it is and why it's important and how they're all part of achieving excellence. And then we engage them in a self-assessment against the model, and so they get a chance to self-assess against the principles and the practices across these key management areas and provide their open-ended comments and we deliver a report that shares those results and findings. But it also, for the low-rated practices, it generates individual action plans. And the individual action plans we've got space on those where we can assign responsibility to employees, whether it's an individual or a team. We've got timing that this should be. They should work on this. We've got any out-of-pocket costs Usually there's not too many and we've got a method of measurement to gauge progress. So what we have in this report is a game plan for the organization to use over the next year or two or three, depending on how much they have to do. And then what we like to do is support the leader.

Dawn Ringrose:

Every organization is different. Some will say we can do this on our own. Others will say, gee, we need a little bit of training in some of these areas, and yet others will say, oh boy, we need quite a bit of hand-holding. And so they proceed on that basis. It really depends on their, the level of sophistication that they have in their organization, and sometimes it's the time available to work on this. So we're willing to help support them in any way we can, and I'd say each and every time we've ever done an assessment with a leader, I always hear a similar refrain uh, it's, they're really pleased with the information that they receive, and the game plan they have to charts the course forward and really lightens their load because they've got all their employees working on this.

Dawn Ringrose:

But I always hear them say about certain aspects of the information that they receive oh, my goodness, I never knew about that. That's something we can do, we can address right away. And so the things that come out of the assessment, there's these aha moments that are really valuable for the leaders, and it's them hearing back what their employees have to say, and that's so important with regards to improvement, because employees have got ideas and suggestions, they've got maybe some things that are bothering them and it just sheds an awful lot of light on what's going on in their organization and it's a tremendous value to them.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Yeah, I think there's a lot of value by like it's an eye opener. Like you said, those aha moments are very important for leaders to. They don't know everything's happening in their organization, so when they are put under the microscope somehow and they get that information, I think it's really very valuable to them. So I don't see the Global Index as just a tool for assessment Don. I see it more as a mean to build a culture of excellence right with an organization. So you shared with us a lot of nice tips on how leaders could leverage the data that comes from the Global Index and from their own assessment, could leverage the data that comes from the Global Index and from their own assessment. Is there anything particular that you've noticed in the latest report that you would like to share? Something new, maybe a new trend?

Dawn Ringrose:

What I see in the latest report because we've now got about 4,000 respondents is we have the ability to take a look at about 11 industry sectors in a fair degree of detail. We've got enough data to report back with confidence on that, and so we see in these industry sectors you know some are good at some things or falling behind in other areas, so I think that's particularly valuable. Behind the scenes we also have quite a bit of information on about 20 countries, and that's always growing, and so we can do, you know, a profile on a given country, if need be as well. But I'm hoping we can make sure that we have that degree of detail for all 21 industry sectors that are part of the assessment. So we're well on our way and we're very close to some other industry sectors. So I think that we're getting quite close to that desired sample size that we wanted in order to speak confidently about the results, and we only report what we have enough data to report. I've been pretty strict about that.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

Well, one interesting thing that organizations usually look for is also benchmarking with others in their geography or other you know geographic areas. So do you see differences between like, if we talk about, for example, the Middle East Europe the respondents from North America? Do you see differences in the level of excellence that's existed?

Dawn Ringrose:

Well, you do see it in by the regions, given the respondents that we have, and what comes through to me is how passionate people are about excellence and striving for it, and I see, you know, great passion right now in the Middle East, and I see growing interest and passion in in Africa. Now what I see which is very interesting to me is in North America. It's like we've we've fallen asleep. You know, we were on this back in when models were first introduced. I mean, the leading models were, you know, efqm from Europe and Baldrige from the United States, the Canadian framework and the Australian framework, and so these countries got off to a great start way back when and they were going great guns maybe in the first 10 years of that, but then they seem to have, I don't know, I I think, leadership sometimes um is victim to, uh, being attracted to the latest flavor of the week and and trying things that are are for short-term gain but not a long-term platform for success, and so they kind of took their eye off the ball, I think.

Dawn Ringrose:

Think in a lot of ways. And so what we see is North America, and that's Canada and the United States. We see them trailing behind other regions now, and I've noticed that not only by doing this research. I've noticed it by being on global committees as well and listening to people from around the world that work in excellence and work in benchmarking, talk about what they're doing, and I see the results of what they're doing as well, and so I think I can confidently say, by both the index and the experience I've had on these global boards and committees, that North America is falling behind, and I think they got to wake up and smell the coffee.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I think this is really I mean very interesting thought here and having worked in the Middle East, I see also that maybe sometimes we don't really spend a lot of time on putting solid foundation for things which could be harmful for excellence, so we look at quick wins rather than long term maybe successes. That also sometimes is not in favor of organizations. It might be good to win an award, but after a couple of years, if you don't maintain that, if you don't keep improving, that's going to be in detriment of the, the success of the organization and and people. Like you mentioned earlier, people don people need something um like to get attached to right, to be motivated, to be able to continuously improve, and that goes back to leadership. So if we look at the differences between the different regions um and how there are different approaches in the Middle East and North America or in Africa, what one advice you would like to give leaders in these regions?

Dawn Ringrose:

Oh boy, this is a topic of great interest for me, and this is one of the things that really attracted me to excellence models in the first place is here we had this beautiful big umbrella of principles and practices that are common to high performing organizations, and within that you'll find ISO standards, you'll find approaches like Lean and Six Sigma, and you'll find the ability to put this in place generally, or you can deep, you know, take a deep dive into any particular practice if you're you've got the expertise or you're working with people that have the expertise, to be very, very sophisticated with it, and, and I think what's important is that you take full advantage of the people in your organization that have expertise in these areas, or the others from outside that you're working with that have expertise in these areas, and they can appreciate how it all knits together, because it's it not only offers you this, this long-term platform for success it's tried and true, we know that through the research but it it allows you to progress to the extent that you that you wish, and and so it takes all those approaches that you might favor in into account, and it allows you to do things generally or very in a very sophisticated fashion and and to work with the expertise that you have at your fingertips or with the experts that you wish to have you accompany on your on your journey.

Dawn Ringrose:

So I think that's something that people don't realize, you know. They feel like they have to choose oh, we're ISO, or we're lean, or we're Six Sigma, or we're. You know we, we follow this model. I don't. I don't think that that's the point. I think the point is we've got some principles and practices here that are common to high performing organizations. We know there's a formula for success if you put this in place, and it's been validated through the research since about 1990. So look no further. You have this robust kind of management system that works.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I think this is great advice and you said like this is really a formula for success and when we work with excellence models, we always ask this question um, are they compatible with other things?

Nancy Nouaimeh:

If I'm doing, if I'm using this model now, can I continue with that another model? That's absolutely feasible and possible because they they are holistic. They look at everything in the organization. They look at how these systems work together and once you have that, it will be easy to plug and play with those other tools in and make sure that they are part of this big system and they meet the purpose of the organization and what they are designed to do. So yeah, like you said, it's not one or the other, it's really how making sure that everything in the organization works well to achieve better results. So thank you for this advice and I think I have some small questions like rapid fire questions for you down at the end of the session today. So if you want to give like one quick tip for someone who's using the Global Index and doing the assessment for the first time, what would that be?

Dawn Ringrose:

So I think it's important to follow a certain process. You know, see how your organization measures up to an excellence model by doing the assessment. You can do that on the system that we have, or you can take a look at Appendix 3 in the publication and do it manually. But the next thing is, once you get your results results, take a look at how your organization measures up to others. That's when you use the, the global oe index, and so you can get a feel how you're doing. You know, by size or industry, sector, region of the world.

Dawn Ringrose:

And the next step is, in addition to working with your employees on improvement initiatives, take a look at role models, and role models are examples, might be those organizations that have earned an excellence award because they've been vetted and you can read about their story or speak to them about what they've done, and there's going to be things that you're going to learn from them that are applicable to to you.

Dawn Ringrose:

So that's what I that's the sort of you know. A tip that I would have is this is a real progression that you you go through. It's like three steps. You know, see how you measure up, see how you compare to others, see what you can learn from others, and it's as simple as that, really. And we're with the kind of system that we've developed. We've designed it all to be very simple and straightforward and time efficient and cost effective and, like you say, it doesn't matter what excellence model or approach you're using. It's going to be beneficial to you to have that information and it's up to you at the end of the day, as a leader, to select the exact things that you want to work with in your organization. But you can't go wrong.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

You can't go wrong with this because it dovetails with everything that we do in the quality and excellence area, and all those things are included under the umbrella of an excellence model absolutely, and this is why we start this journey right is to continuously improve, to find out things, the gaps in what we're doing, and make sure that we do things better and design things better, I think, as we move on. So Don, you mentioned role model and awards. I don't want to put you on on spot here or you don't have to mention any name, but if you want to choose a role model organization that you've worked with and that is really kind of a role model for excellence, what are the traits, what are the things that you think are very important in that organization?

Dawn Ringrose:

well the traits that they have. I mean it's you know, it's awful, it's an awful lot like an athlete that's working towards a gold medal and standing on the podium. The work that they do to develop the mastery and become an expert, and so their performance is above others and it's something to be very proud of. And it's those many, many hours that have got into achieving that pinnacle of success. So it's a mastery and what you see in organizations that that are successful in doing this, you see a real passion within the organization and and that passion is usually the spark that created that is often in in the leadership's hands. You know, in the initial stages of saying to the employees this is what we're going to do, you're involved, this is what we're going to do, you're involved, this is how we're going to do it, and they're inviting them on this journey.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

I like the fact that you're again mentioning passion. I think you've mentioned it in the beginning of the podcast and now again. And it really goes back to leadership, right, and we would ask a lot of times I mean, how can I convince my leader or how can I make them really believe in that? And that's where you sit in front of your client and say that's a tough one, right, because if the leader doesn't have that spark, it's hard really to motivate people, it's hard to give them that reason to start their journey and and whatever you start without leadership, it's not going to be successful because there's no empowerment, there's no support from top down, which is very important, I think, for excellence. And don, if I want to um, ask you just one last question now. You mentioned a little bit your journey, um, in the beginning of the podcast, and how did you start the global index and the framework? So what inspires you personally to focus on excellence?

Dawn Ringrose:

well, I think it's in my blood you know, I look back.

Dawn Ringrose:

I've asked myself this question a few times and I look back and I I grew up in a family. I was surrounded by people who were very, very good at what they did, all sorts of different professionals, and that was so inspirational because I looked around and I thought, well, I want to be just like them. And then everything that I did I was engaged in sports and I was engaged in, of course, academic pursuits and business pursuits and everything I just always had that passion of, you know, wanting to do my best and, and you know, setting goals and working towards those goals. And so I think I think it's just well ingrained in me and I I suspect that if you talk to a lot of other quality and excellence professionals, they've got kind of a similar history. There's something that we have just deep inside of us that makes us go.

Nancy Nouaimeh:

And I just want to be like you, don. So thank you very much for your time here today. Thank you for sharing your valuable insights on the Global Index for Organizational Excellence To our audience. Please connect with Don if you'd like to know more about the model. It helps organization on their path to performance excellence and to organizational excellence, very much needed as we see more challenges in the workspace, more challenges in the market. Organization need to be more competitive, so that's really something that you could take forward and start implementing in your organization. So, to our listeners, if you're considering using the Global Index, what's one thing you'll take away from today's conversation Please stay connected and tune into our next episode. Thank you very much, dawn.

Dawn Ringrose:

It's my pleasure, Nancy. Thanks for inviting me on the podcast.

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Nancy Nouaimeh

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Dawn Ringrose

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