school system | Customer Service Solutions, Inc.

Home  /  K-12 Sustainable Excellence? A School District’s Approach  /  school system

Same Place, Different Experiences - 9/26/23


Meredith was getting discharged from the clinic, when the nurse came in, gave her a packet of information including the discharge instructions, explained the next steps, and asked if Meredith had any questions.  Freida, across the hall, was told that she could leave when ready.  However, Freida had to Read more

What Annoys the Customer? - 9/19/23


Domino’s Pizza had TV commercials years ago where they promoted how they trained their employees to “Avoid the Noid.”  The “Noid” was basically an annoying person or thing that would disrupt the delivery driver, possibly making the driver drop the pizza on the way to your door.  The goal Read more

Lift It Up - 9/12/23


I worked with a great client for several years who was in a leadership role in the education industry, and she was the executive champion for a culture-strengthening initiative.  We were the outside firm helping to develop the overall strategy and facilitate the teams addressing the various aspects of Read more

Addressing the Horror Story that Wasn’t - 9/5/23


You may have seen the commercials for one of those garden hoses that fits in your pocket.  When you put it on the valve outside your home and turn on the water, it expands to 50 feet.  When you’re done and turn off the water, it contracts and fits Read more

Be There ALWAYS for the Customer - 8/29/23


In healthcare, the patient experience mantras often include the phrase Always, such as: We have an always culture.  This gets at frequency of action.  Instead of service excellence being a most-of-the-time occurrence, some-of-the-time occurrence, an occasional or rare occurrence, the idea in an Always Culture is that the organization Read more

Respect, Regardless of Rank - 8/22/23


I was reading a management book written by a former naval officer.  He was given a leadership role over a ship that had been underperforming and had low morale.  One thing he did to turn around the performance, to improve morale, was instill in everyone onboard the principle that Read more

Move on to the Next One - 8/15/23


The ultimate game in professional American football is the Super Bowl.  In this past year’s Super Bowl, James Bradberry of the Philadelphia Eagles was called for a penalty with less than two minutes to go in the game.  The penalty gave the other team a first down; the other Read more

How to Rise to the Occasion - 8/8/23


In the movie Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, Mr. Magorium – played by Dustin Hoffman – tells his protégé that “Your life is an occasion.  Rise to it.” He’s conveying a big picture life lesson – don’t let fear and apprehension keep you from living. Rising to the occasion is also something Read more

Thanks for Reading - 8/1/23


My company, Customer Service Solutions, Inc., just celebrated our 25th Anniversary!  We love the work we do for our clients, and we definitely love our clients.  We’ve developed many friendships over the years, and we’ve tried to provide consistently high quality and personal support for whatever may be their Read more

Share the Why to Value the Customer - 7/25/23


We encourage our clients to explain “The Why behind the What” to the customer.  Usually we suggest that staff explain Why so that the customer understands the reason for a change or can buy-in to a particular solution. However, explaining the Why is also effective when you’re doing some very Read more

•••••

K-12 Sustainable Excellence? A School District’s Approach

Posted on February 18, 2014 in Business Advice, Education Please leave a comment

Blog 2-18-14In Tennessee, the Maury County Public School System is working toward a status of “Excellence” in the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence (TCPE). The TCPE is a statewide initiative modeled after the Malcolm Baldrige quality awards. And while Baldrige may be very familiar to manufacturing, healthcare, and other service industries, one can readily wonder why a school system is participating.

When an organization wants to adhere to the Baldrige Award Criteria, it’s important to understand to what they’re committing. For the Education Criteria for Performance Excellence, the primary categories of evaluation are:

When you look objectively at these categories, you soon see that it’s hard to achieve “Excellence” in any industry without being at least “Above Average” in all of them. How easy is it to be an excellent performer without leadership that sets a clear direction and models behaviors to others? It’s tough to achieve Excellence without a definition of it and a Plan to get there. Excellence is often defined by the customer – the individual with the opinion and decision-making power to stay with or leave a business – so how can we be Excellent without an intentional focus on the customer? And how do you know when you’re straying from the path to Excellence or whether it’s a time to reward and recognize unless you Measure performance and continuously improve?

I could go on, but you get the picture. Organizational Excellence in Education, Sports, Healthcare, Government, etc., has several key components. This is particularly true if you want Sustainable Excellence.

To attain high levels of performance and continuously improve, make sure you have the plan, customer-focus, leadership, workforce, and operations that drive measurable results.

Did you like this post? Here are other Education-related posts:

Also, check out our Education site: http://cssamerica.com/education-industry