What Is Organizational Excellence?
Quality Glossary Definition: Organizational excellence
Organizational excellence is defined as the ongoing efforts to establish an internal framework of standards and processes intended to engage and motivate employees to deliver products and services that fulfill customer requirements within business expectations. It is the achievement by an organization of consistent superior performance—for example, outputs that exceed meeting objectives, needs, or expectations.
Component Definitions:
- An organization is a group aggregated and combined under specific leadership to function as a single entity for a particular purpose.
- Excellence is a measure of consistently superior performance that surpasses requirements and expectations without demonstrating significant flaws or waste.
Organizational excellence continues the progress established by a foundation such as total quality management, in which all levels of the organization participate in continual improvement.
Jump to:
- Organizational excellence models
- Managing for organizational excellence
- Benefits of organizational excellence
- Organizational excellence resources
Organizational excellence models
Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
One program highlighting the traits and attributes of organizational excellence is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. In the Baldrige Excellence Framework, the attributes of organizational excellence include:
- Leadership
- Strategic planning
- Customer and market focus
- Measurement, analysis and knowledge management
- Human resources/workforce focus
- Process management
- Business results
European Foundation for Quality Management
A similar protocol, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model, includes:
- Leadership
- People
- Strategy
- Partnerships and resources
- Processes, products, and services
- People results
- Customer results
- Society results
- Business results
Deming Prize
The Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) created the Deming Prize, with specific awards for individuals and for organizations and operating divisions. From a definition of "company-wide quality control" (CWQC), the Deming Prize identified multiple levels and categories of organizational excellence that include:
- Organization and its management
- Education
- Quality information
- Planning
- Analysis
- Standardization
- Control
- Quality assurance
- Results
These different perspectives suggest that the common traits of organizational excellence are consistent across different cultures and nations.
Managing for organizational excellence
Another perspective is to view organizational excellence as the successful integration of technology, infrastructure, and personnel to achieve a common goal or mission.
Organizational excellence is often the result of transitional and transformational activities. Successful organizational outcomes require deliberate management and improvement in six key areas:
- Information: Metrics, measures, and decision support
- Structure: Roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities of each functional area
- People: Total human capital within the organization
- Rewards: Compensation and incentives
- Learning systems: Knowledge and training to continuously improve skills
- Work processes: Interaction and linkage of workflows
Organizational excellence is dependent upon gaining sufficient commitment to embrace and apply positive changes in the above areas throughout their workforce. Organizational change management is necessary to effectively communicate the changes to those affected in order to minimize uncertainty and obstructions. Collaboration is critical, and the evidence of organizational excellence can be demonstrated across the organization with a balanced scorecard that covers the following perspectives:
- Financial
- Customer
- Internal business processes
- Learning and growth
Organizational excellence is incremental. Different tiers or “maturity levels” should be identified as interim targets for each of the organizational excellence characteristics. By focusing on the performance expectations of an accessible maturity level, employees and stakeholders will be more inclined to make the necessary changes within their control and capabilities. And as maturity levels are reached, participants should be recognized for their efforts.
Benefits of pursuing and achieving organizational excellence
The pursuit of achieving organizational excellence can strengthen the overall prestige of an organization both internally and externally. Any additional costs to infrastructure and overhead have the potential to be repaid with greater returns resulting from engaged employees, satisfied customers, and more efficient operations.
Established in 2020, ASQExcellence (ASQE) sets the standard for quality-driven organizations and insight worldwide, empowering the organizations it serves to achieve excellence. ASQE’s Organizational Membership is focused on four key areas of organizational excellence:
- Industry Benchmarking
- Quality Resources & Tools
- Talent & Team Development
- Engagement, Networking, & Events
Organizational Membership benefits assist in all four benefit categories, especially to help develop a world-class benchmarking program and pursue best practices in organizational excellence and operational performance year over year. For more information, visit About ASQE.
Organizational Excellence Resources
ASQE Insights on Excellence® Research
ASQE’s Insights on Excellence® Benchmarking Tool establishes a global data set across the eight categories of organizational performance excellence—Operations, Voice of the Customer, Workforce, Leadership, Strategy, Technology, Measurements & Results, Barriers & Disruptors—and the latest optional IoE category: Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) practices. Visit the IoE Research page for the collection of published research focused on real-world insights from global companies on organizational excellence and digital transformation.
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