[The following article appears in the March, 1995 edition of _The_Chronicle_of_CQI_, pages 1 to 3.] THE QUALITY AWARD Curt W. Reimann is the director for Quality Programs at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Under his leadership, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) has evolved to its present state of refinement. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was established in 1987. The Award promotes an understanding of quality excellence, greater awareness of quality as a crucial competitive element, and the sharing of quality information and strategies. On December 16, 1994, NIST announced the launch of its Education Pilot Program. This pilot program will seek to determine the interest and readiness of education organizations to participate in a nationwide recognition program and to evaluate the Education Pilot Criteria. Reimann graciously agreed to be interviewed by The Chronicle of CQI about the goals of the pilot program and related topics. CQI: How about a brief history of how the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award crept into education. Reimann: In the earliest days of the program, we were mostly concerned with our competitiveness and balance of trade deficit. So there was the belief that we should begin the launch in the business sector. We had some educators involved every year. We also realized that the Award should be opened up to other sectors, including education. CQI: Did the past recipients of the MBNQA have any influence? Reimann: The past winners began by creating networks, including the endeavors of IBM to fund TQM efforts in higher education and activities of companies like Motorola, Proctor and Gamble, and Xerox to establish outreach programs between businesses and institutions of higher education. Now we have groups like school superintendents, people involved in curriculum development, and people from higher education inviting representatives from the quality community to speak at their annual meetings. CQI: Was there any opposition to creating an education award? Reimann: Not a lot, but some. Some people believe that quality is over sold or that it is just a bunch of tools and techniques or that there is too much emphasis on process. As you know, Bob, there are a lot of dumb ways to doing this and most of them have been tried. Almost everyone is familiar with the horror stories where all of the wrong things were done and where everyone came out of it mad and where nothing had been improved. We are gratified with the lessons we have learned from the winners-which, by the way, have exceeded our wildest expectations. Nevertheless, the lessons have to be considered as fragmentary since, after all, there have been only 22 winners out of the 10 million entities in this country. CQI: How many applications do you expect to get in the initial pilot? Reimann: We hope the system will provide us with 8-12 applications. We believe that this will enable us to test the subsystems in the evaluation process ranging from the training of the examiners, the writing of applications, to the providing of feedback. If we do all of those steps well, we will be very pleased. CQI: People by their very nature are competitive, therefore, don't you think that creating this award will "force" educational institutions to apply? Reimann: I think that's true. In the short run, I think that the other area of influence is the creation of the state and local awards. This gives the institutions a chance to do the same things we are doing at the national level . CQI: How many mini Baldrige awards are there? Reimann: About 35. About 25 states--and that's something that changes every couple of months--and about another 10 to 12 local awards. CQI: How many educational institutions do you think will be the recipients of the Baldrige award? Reimann: Very few--probably because very few educational institutions will be applicants. CQI: In your opinion, what do you think are the primary reasons for the "failures" when educational institutions try to implement quality management? Reimann: Well, I wouldn't fashion myself as a quality expert in education. But my judgment is that many of the things that don't work in industry also don't work in education, with the possible added twist that some of the changes need to go more slowly in education because there is much more autonomy. In a hierarchical organization when the leader really gets committed, there is a wave that goes down through the organization that you can count on being completed within a couple of years, at least in awareness and buy-in. I think that there has been too much emphasis on tools and not enough emphasis on strategic issues and on the identification of critical success factors. I think it is a very common misconception that the "total" in total quality management (TQM) means that everyone is involved and uses all of the techniques. So I think many of the "failures" have been failures of strategy. I think bureaucracy has been a problem wherever TQM has been applied. There has to be the conviction that this is going to take a long time, and we are going to have to work together as teams and learn the tools and techniques. In addition, too many organizations think that they are quality organizations because they use teams and tools, but they don't examine the results. CQI: In one study, 9 of 10 institutions of higher education failed in their efforts to implement TQM. Could we attribute these failures to the impatient response by top management? Reimann: Probably yes--but I would suspect that the rejection rate in universities would be higher than average since there isn't the respect for good management in education. CQI: After reading the MBNQA Education Pilot Criteria, I was wondering about the problems schools might have with supplying meaningful information about Category 6.0, School Performance Results, especially about item 6.1, Student Performance Results. Any comments? Reimann: We will take comfort and hide behind the fact that this is a pilot, and part of a pilot is to tease out such ideas. We believe that educational institutions have to go through the therapeutic struggle of assessing whether there has been an improvement in student performance and how the performance trends compare with comparable schools. If we acknowledge that very few of us are doing this, if at all, it will change the discussion from "are these people crazy?" to "this is something we should be working on." CQI: Why are more accrediting agencies placing emphasis on items related to the Baldrige criteria and the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle for improvement? Reimann: I think it is a part of a general demand for accountability--what are we getting for the vast sums that we pay? I think that the PDCA is being replaced by cycles of learning and improvement. Learning is really adaptation, while improvement is more of the tweak. Incidentally, a major failing of the quality movement is that it got hung up on PDCA and minimal improvement. In many instances, the changes were simply corrections and not really improvements. This mentality meant that you could be sitting in a corner perfecting the vacuum tube while someone else was inventing the transistor. CQI: What about using the Baldrige criteria as the framework for accrediting not only educational institutions, but for all of the academic programs as well? Reimann: I think that when one considers certification, one is really talking about minimum standards. You're really talking about being good enough to operate, to function. What we are talking about in the MBNQA is how do we determine high levels of excellence. I think it would be very difficult to use the same framework to cover the range from being barely good enough to function to being the best in the world. CQI: What about using the International Standards Organization 9000 framework for accrediting educational institutions. Reimann: If I put the best construction on ISO 9000, which on a good day I can do, I would see it ideally applied to a repetitive operation in which the customer wants the assurances that the supplier is not meddling with the process. However, in universities where you have a lot of creativity and/or autonomy, ISO 9000 certification is entirely inappropriate. CQI: What about reengineering efforts? Reimann: I think that reengineering is basically customer focused and involves breakthrough thinking. Since people who were initially involved in the quality improvement efforts were not too good about thinking outside of the envelope, reengineering had to come over the fence. I think it has worked well in companies that already had teams and quality processes where reengineering could find a home. CQI: What are the benefits of applying for the MBNQA? Reimann: I think that the process of writing the application is going to force universities to know a lot more about themselves. When they compare their self-assessment with the feedback provided by the site-visiting team, they should find this information very useful. CQI: Curt, if you wanted to give a word or two of encouragement to the those educational institutions considering a CQI effort, what would you say? Reimann: The effort to improve requires a lot of institutional development of strategy and a lot of teamwork, but, based on the experiences that we have had with industry, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is well worth it. It is not for the faint of heart. It requires a great deal of commitment and leadership. Copyright 1995 Cornesky & Associates, Inc. Total Quality Management Consultants The Chronicle of CQI Editor: Robert A. Cornesky 489 Oakland Park Blvd. Port Orange, FL 32127 PH: (800) 388-8682 PH: (904) 760-5866; FAX: (904) 756-6755 E-Mail: tqm1bob@aol.com One year U.S. subscription $69. Multiple subscription discount available.