Project in Leadership

Are We Making Progress as Leaders?

Use This Tool to Quickly Assess Your Leaders’ Perceptions

Baldrige Performance Excellence Program • www.nist.gov/baldrige

In today’s environment, if you are standing still, you are falling behind. Making the right decisions at the right time is critical. Following through on those decisions is challenging: deploying strategy is much more difficult than developing strategy. If deployment is so challenging, the questions are, Are you making progress? Would your workforce agree? How do you know?

Are We Making Progress as Leaders? and the companion document for employees, Are We Making Progress?, are designed to help you know. These tools show you whether your perceptions agree with those of your workforce. They will help you focus your improvement and communication efforts on the most critical areas.

The questionnaires are organized by the seven Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence categories, part of the Baldrige Excellence Framework. These questionnaires identify opportunities for improvement and direct you to more detailed questions in the Criteria. They also may help you identify some ideas for making improvements and recognizing opportunities for innovation.

Ask your leadership team to complete this questionnaire. It will challenge you to address issues critical to your organization’s success.

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3Download Are We Making Progress as Leaders?

http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/ publications/progress_leaders.cfm

3If necessary, modify the questionnaire to address your specific needs (e.g., add questions, use language specific to your organization).

3Distribute the questionnaire to your leadership team.

3Download the companion document, Are We Making Progress?, to see if your leaders’ perceptions agree with those of your workforce.

How do you know?

Are your values, vision, mission, and plans being deployed?

Does your leadership team understand and support them? Are they communicated to, understood by, and supported by all members of your workforce?

Are your communications effective?

Is the message being well received?

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Leadership

1A Our workforce knows our organization’s mission (what we are trying to accomplish).

1B Our workforce knows our organization’s vision (where it is trying to go in the future).

1C Our leadership team is ethical and demonstrates our organization’s values. 1D Our leadership team creates a work environment that helps our employees do their jobs. 1E Our leadership team shares information about the organization.

1F Our leadership team asks employees what they think.

Strategy

2A As our leadership team plans for the future, we ask our employees for their ideas.

2B Our organization encourages totally new ideas (innovation).

2C Our employees know the parts of our organization’s plans that will affect them and their work.

2D Our employees know how to tell if they are making progress on their workgroup’s part of the plan.

2E Our organization is flexible and makes changes quickly when needed.

Are We Making Progress as Leaders? Your perceptions as a leader are important to our organization! There are 40 statements below. For each statement, check the box that best matches how you feel (strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, strongly agree). How you feel will help us decide where we most need to improve or change. We also have the opportunity (using the Are We Making Progress? questionnaire) to compare the perceptions of our leadership team with those of our workforce to see if there are differences. We will not be looking at individual responses but will use the information from our whole leadership team to make decisions. It should take you about 10 to 15 minutes to complete this questionnaire.

Senior leaders, please fill in the name of organization or unit being discussed. Note: This refers to what is meant each time the word “organization” is used below. In addition, “employees” is used interchangeably with “workforce,” which includes all people performing work for the organization.

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Are We Making Progress as Leaders? • www.nist.gov/baldrige

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Customers Note: Your employees’ customers are the people who use the products of their personal work.

3A Our employees know who their most important customers are.

3B Our employees regularly ask their customers what they need and want.

3C Our employees ask if their customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with their work.

3D Our employees are allowed to make decisions to satisfy their customers. 3E Our employees also know who our organization’s most important customers are.

Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management 4A Our employees know how to measure the quality of their work.

4B Our employees use this information to make changes that will improve their work.

4C Our employees know how the measures they use in their work fit into our organization’s overall measures of improvement.

4D Our employees get all the information they need to do their work.

4E Our employees know how our organization as a whole is doing.

Workforce

5A Our employees cooperate and work as a team.

5B Our leadership team encourages and enables our employees to develop their job skills so they can advance in their careers.

5C Our employees are recognized for their work.

5D Our organization has a safe workplace.

5E Our managers and our organization care about our workforce.

5F Our workforce is committed to our organization’s success.

Are We Making Progress as Leaders? • www.nist.gov/baldrige

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Would you like to give more information about any of your responses? Please include the number of the statement (for example, 2A or 7D) you are discussing.

Operations

6A Our employees can get everything they need to do their jobs.

6B Our organization has good processes for doing its work.

6C Our employees can improve their personal work processes when necessary. 6D Our organization is prepared to handle an emergency.

Results

7A Our employees’ work products meet all requirements.

7B Our employees’ customers are satisfied with their work.

7C Our workforce knows how well our organization is doing financially. 7D Our organization has the right people and skills to do its work.

7E Our organization removes things that get in the way of progress.

7F Our organization obeys laws and regulations.

7G Our organization practices high standards and ethics.

7H Our organization helps our employees help their community.

7I Our employees believe our organization is a good place to work.

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Contact For information on the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program: www.nist.gov/baldrige | 301.975.2036 | [email protected] Are We Making Progress as Leaders? Revised 2015 Photo credits: ©Pressmaster/Shutterstock

Baldrige Performance Excellence Program • National Institute of Standards and Technology • Department of Commerce