Principle 1: Senior Executives as Role Models (Item 7)

The senior executives' constant role modeling of these Business Excellence Principles and creation of a supportive environment are necessary to achieve the organization's potential.

Why this question is important

You should measure and report your progress with all 10 Business Excellence Principles.

The best way to make certain that you are doing something is to measure. "What gets measured gets done". If you do not set up a system of measurements and insist on reports, you are demonstrating that "this is not important, no one cares about it". If it is not made important, people will not do it.

I was too busy

You should measure that people who should be doing them are doing the Business Improvement projects. That the resources are being allied to the projects that dead lines are being met. It is very easy for people to say "I was too busy with work, I need more time". You should not accept this excuse. It implies that

• people could not or did not make time for the improvement project
• that `real work' is more important that improving the business
• Although you can be sympathetic with both and of course you must solve today's problems or you might not be around to have problems tomorrow. However, if you do not if you hear this excuse often, you have problems. Either
• not enough resources
• the project is too difficult
• incentives make doing `real work' more attractive than improvement work
• improvement work is not seen as work
• there is more kudos, respect, career advancement in fighting fires and doing real work than in working to build infrastructure for tomorrow's business.

These indicate significant problems that must be solved, or Business Improvement will always be shuffled off to do later.

In most companies, projects are set up, people find good reasons not to do them, excuses for slipped deadlines are accepted. As soon as that happens, you have implied that Business Improvement is not important. We are not suggesting that you blame the people involved. There are very good reasons that they are not doing the projects. You need to identify and fix those problems. Blaming people is an excuse for not fixing systems.

Measure success

You should also measure to see if your improvement projects are in fact leading to successful outcomes. Are they effective? Is the business actually improving?

You always need to measure to see if any of your strategies are working. Business Improvement strategies are strategies and so you must see if they are working.

Success measurements would include that your rating on the Principles has improved. You could make this assessment by assessing your company using the questionnaire.

Difficulties with self-rating

Unfortunately, self-rating is difficult. Our experience is that when most people first come across the Business Excellence Principles and do their first few self-assessments, they consistently over-estimate how well they are doing. It is only with experience and understanding that people say, "I was not as good at that as I originally thought. I am better now than I was, but those original scores of mine were dreamland."

In many ways it is like someone who sees a sport on TV and says (without knowledge), "That looks easy, I think I can do that easily. I give myself a 5. I am good at that". For example, the sport may be skiing. It looks easy. Then the person tries it. It is hard to do. They re-rate them self to a zero, take some lessons and put in lots of time to learn. They build their self-rating up to a 7 or a 9. Then, they try some very difficult terrain or a race. The self-rating drops again. It will rise again when you gain skills in the area in which you found yourself weak.