In this issue, I will share my experience acquired from the conglomerate and its operating companies. For the purpose of this article, I will articulate the Organizational and Personal Learning which is one of the eleven core values and concepts used in Malcolm Baldrige Criteria. As before, I will use case studies to show how some of the companies implement them.

To recap, below are the Eleven Core Values and Concepts of Baldrige Criteria:-

Visionary Leadership | Customer-Driven Excellence | Organizational and Personal Learning | Valuing Employees and Partners | Agility | Focus on the Future |Managing for Innovation | Management by Fact | Public Responsibility and Citizenship | Focus on Results and Creating Value | Systems Perspective

Articulated Organizational and Personal Learning A systematic and well-executed Continuous Learning Approach to achieve highest business performance is essential Organization and Personal Learning. It should be develop as a way of life in the day-to-day function. This may result in major changes or minor changes to strategies, process, products and service. Organizational and Personal Learning should results in enhancing values to all stakeholders such as shareholders, customers, employee and partners.

Employee success depends on opportunities for personal learning either to gain knowledge of new topics and acquire new skill.. Invest into personal learning for employee through education, training, benchmarking and other opportunity for growth and development. Such opportunities include job rotation, job enhancement, knowledge sharing and reward and recognition for increased knowledge. This learning should enhance value creation for the employee.

Case Study on Organizational and Personal Learning At the corporate level, there is a concerted effort to deploy a systematic approach to several programs for organizational Learning. If you recall, I have indicated in Part 1 of this topic, that Visionary Leadership would include setting direction for company to achieve Investment and Financial Discipline as well as Operational Excellence. A systematic approach to Strategic Planning that enable companies to develop meaningful KPI for achieving Operational Excellence such that Investment and Financial Discipline can be attained. The result dog using this systematic approach to Strategic Planning has resulted in several major break-through in business advancement.

For operation improvement, a systematic Methodology to Continuous Improvement was developed and tested over the last 6 years by the corporate office at several companies. It has helped companies who adopted this methodology improved their product and service by reducing waste, rejects and increased productivity etc. Many companies have benefited from using this systematic approach both financially and value creation to the employees.

At the organization level, a compulsory one percent of the employee wages are allocation to the Human Resource Development Fund (HRDF) as a way to mandate organization to spend on employee Personal Learning. While all companies I worked with utilized this fund very well, some training managers have systematic approach to prioritize allocation of this fund to training course for employee..

Issues with Organizational and Personal Learning Some leaders remain the way they develop strategies and focus very on financial results as a way to of strategies. For some reason, they failed to understand that it is not the strategies that failed but the deployment of the strategies. Often, companies that remain in a fire-fighting mode do not implement their strategies systematically. There is a lack of aligned actions and KPI to track the progress of the strategies.

Although a systematic methodology was developed and even tested its application, there are few companies remain in the side line chosen not to adopt it. They view this methodology take up too many resources and take long time to achieve desired results. Obviously, they look for a quick fix solution hence fire-fighting seems to be popular as a way to resolve problem. However, there are some training managers lack the skill to align the employee training needs with organizational learning needs. As a results, employee learning seems to be unbalanced between the two.

Opportunity for Improvement A systematic alignment tool is needed to help leaders to developed aligned actions and KPI. Strategic Map from Balanced Scorecard is an excellent tools for this purpose. It has been adopted into the corporate Strategic Planning Process and has been used by several companies.

A systematic approach to Continuous Improvement methodology is established but requires leaders to adopt it as their way for improvement. At corporate office, perhaps a road show is needed to demonstrate the power of the improvement methodology

A systematic Training Needs Analysis should be developed to balance the organizational and personal needs in terms of continuous learning so that the HRDF is properly utilized. Perhaps, company need to allocated separate fund for Organizational Learning programs.

In summary, having understood the Organizational and Personal Learning as one of the Values and Concepts in Malcolm Baldrige, Leaders might benchmark their CEO of Baldrige Winners on their TQM successes in this value. My next article will articulate the next Core Values and Concepts in Valuing Employees and Partners

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Disclaimer All rights reserved. This article is written by the author based on his practical application experience. All definitions and interpretation of terminology are his point of view and has it has no intention to conflict with experts in similar topic. The author holds no responsibility for the use of this article in any way. Full Baldrige Criteria are available athttp://www.nist.gov/quality

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Free to reprint or re-publish All rights reserved. You are free to reprint or re-publish this article as long as you include my resource box at the end of this article. And ensure that the URL in the resource box remained intact and it is linked to the author's website.

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Resource Box: About the Author, LM Foong

The author holds a MBA major in TQM. He is an expert in Malcolm Baldrige Business Framework and Baldrige Assessment and TQM Implementations in manufacturing and service sector. He facilitates workshops and Cost Reduction and Productivity Improvement projects. He publishes TQM articles, ebooks, case studies, trainer manual and presentation slides available at More TQM articles or Please Visit my Web Site

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