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AQP’s Team Excellence Award Evaluation
Criteria
In the May issue News for a Change began a
continuing series on AQP’s National Team
Excellence Award. In this issue, the current criteria
are presented (see the sidebar); however, it’s
important to note that the criteria are dynamic, not
static. Each year, the team excellence process
executive committee reviews and updates the criteria
as appropriate, practicing the principles of
continuous improvement that are essential to
sustained organizational success. It’s,
therefore, likely that updates to the criteria listed
here will occur later this year, and NFC will
publish them when they are adopted.
There’s no reason for organizations to hold
off on applying the criteria right now, however. In
fact, it is AQP’s intention that the criteria
are used for far more than evaluating teams
participating in the competition. Much like the
Baldrige performance criteria, the team excellence
criteria have a variety of potential uses depending
on the maturity of the organization’s team
processes and the phase of specific teams’
projects, as follows:
- While Getting Started—Use the
criteria as a process guide for team improvement
projects.
- While Conducting the Project—Use
the criteria as a diagnostic tool to ensure project
work is robust, complete, and ready for
implementation.
- While Preparing to Compete—Use the
criteria to assess the merits of the draft
presentation and to understand judges’
feedback from initial rounds, as well as guidelines
for improving the presentation.
Additionally, if the organization doesn’t
have an improvement process already in place, the
criteria can be used as a framework for launching
team-based projects. Because the criteria are based
on commonly accepted steps for an improvement
process, they provide a generic guideline that will
fit almost any organization’s culture. Even the
fifth category, which may at first seem to relate to
the National Team Excellence competition, actually
offers a straight-forward approach for evaluating the
effectiveness of teams’ draft presentations to
their sponsors, ensuring that their final
presentations will be well organized, reflect the key
project findings in a concise and understandable way,
and pave the way for implementation.
No article on the criteria would be complete
without recognizing the outstanding efforts of the
team excellence process executive committee, as
listed below. The committee, the AQP board of
directors, and staff also thank Warren Krompf,
immediate past chair of the committee, for his
leadership, passion, support, and innumerable
contributions to AQP in general and to the Team
Excellence Award process in particular.
• Chair, Raymond Bunch, Take Care
Consulting Group
• Jim Bianchetta, Bianchetta
Resources
• Rich Carpenter, SRC
Associates
• Ray Emery, Scitor Corporation
• Dr. Robert Finkelmeier, Finkelmeier
& Associates
• Dr. Roberta Sappington, FAA Center for
Management Development
• Dr. Cheryl Wild, Wild & Associates,
Inc.
The committee always welcomes comments and
suggestions on the criteria. Contact Geetha Balagopal
at geetha@aqp.org
to share your insights.
 GLENN BODINSON is vice
president of the Hogan Center for Performance
Excellence, is a member of both AQP and ASQ, and has
served as Baldrige Award examiner, Texas Award for
Performance Excellence judge, Workforce Excellence
senior examiner, Shingo Prize examiner, and AQP
National Team Excellence Award judge. He is an
ASQ-certified Six Sigma Black Belt, quality engineer,
quality auditor, and quality manager. The Hogan
Center helps organizations improve their financial
and operational performance. In fact, 12 of its
members have received the highest levels of national
and state business excellence awards, more than any
other firm in the United States.
 RAYMOND BUNCH is president of
Take Care Consulting Group, located in Exton, PA. He
has more than 30 years’ experience in
operations management and in designing and
implementing performance management strategies,
corporate culture change initiatives, process
improvements, high performance teams, and
Baldrige-based management systems. He serves on the
AQP Team Excellence Executive Committee, the ASQ
Philadelphia Section board of directors, and the
Committee of Experts for KEMA Registered Quality.
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