“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” – Herbert Simon, Recipient of Nobel Prize in Economics.

With the recent advancement in mobile communication technologies now we are under huge pressure of information overflow. For example how many email messages do you receive every day? What about information received via social media services such as WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, RSS feed, twitter, and Facebooks?

It is so difficult to exercise discipline to get the information you need without letting it take over your day. We are not talking about time management here (although it’s an important issue as well), it’s the massive amount of information available to you, the number of search results you get when you search for anything, number of websites, blogs, and journals available almost about any topic.

Besides the huge number of useful and genuine websites there are websites which have dubious content, often copied from other websites, and are solely designed to attract visitors to increase advertising revenues. With the tactics and techniques of dubious  websites it is sometimes hard to identify the genuine websites without a lot of investigative work.

Because of this phenomenon, the World Economic Forum estimated that the informatics for adding value to information will be the no. 1 emerging technology in 2012.

So what is Informatics for adding value to information? Simply, it is filtering the noise “bad/useless content” and re-organising information for the end user.

This is one of the main ideas behind BPIR.com, we offer information picked up and written by real professional researchers, now let’s see how the “raw” information is being processed at BPIR.com.

There are at least 4 processes for treating the raw information at BPIR before publishing:

Translating nation’s, or an organisation’s, vision into action is a tremendous challenge which cannot be accomplished overnight. Implementing good governance and anti-corruption measures are extremely important; and purely technical solutions are rarely successful. To achieve a successful outcome, vested interests, competing demands, and prior expectations must all be understood and managed. Countries can move only as fast as their political systems allow.

Listen to Ms. Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Managing Director of the World Bank Group, speaking at the Forum on Good Governance: “From Vision to Action” which was held in Manila on December 6, 2010

If you are not already a BPIR member this is an excellent time to consider joining to enjoy the many BPIR membership benefits.

Neil Crawford
BPIR

Board governance, or corporate governance, simply refers to the job of the Board of Directors. Boards are sandwiched between shareholders (or some other kind of ownership) on one side, and the CEO and staff on the other side. Because the ultimate authority for an organisation comes directly form its owners the role of Boards involves:

1. Regular dialogue with the owners to establish what results are expected.
2. Translation of the owner’s expectations into written criteria (policy) for success.
3. Monitor to check that the criteria were actually met.

One of the repeated questions in quality management is, what is the cost of quality? is quality free?
Well, my personal opinion is, it is and it is not. According to quality guru Philip Crosby “Quality is free. But it is not a gift”

In other words, the organisation needs to “pay” for establishing a quality system in order to get the rewards, it’s like paying for someone to fix the leaks in a system.

Therefore, with any  improvement initiative there will be some cost associated with the programme but at the end the organisation should gain much more than what they have paid.

In Dec 2011, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published the results of a research study aimed to evaluate the net social benefits of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Programme.

The researchers compared the benefits received by the 273 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award applicants from 2007 to 2010 with the cost of operating the Baldrige Program.

According to the research, the benefit-to-cost ratio of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is 820-to-1, which means for every $1 spent to implement the programme the economy will get $820 in form of social value, which is categorized into 3 categories:

The researchers noted  that the benefit-to-cost ratio would be much higher  for the US economy but the research only focussed on the benefits stemming from the award applicants (in respect to the social costs of running the whole Baldrige programme). In reality, 1000’s more organisations will have benefited from the programme.

You can read the full research from here.

Ahmed
BPIR.com

Is there any correlation between business excellence programmes and employee engagement, morale and satisfaction?  Adam’s Stoehr (Excellence Canada Vice President) is conducting  research about this topic and aims to  answer this question.

Initial findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between implementation of excellence programmes and employee engagement, morale and satisfaction.

If you would like to participate in the research you can contact Adam at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . For further details about the research and the findings read the post below.

Ahmed
BPIR.com

Why do we bother with Excellence strategies?  This stuff doesn’t really make a difference does it?  What is the return on Excellence?  I have way more important things to do. I’ll put it off until next month/quarter/year.  If this sounds like you or anyone you know please read on.

Here is some fresh research that may give you the reminder you need to stay the course. I’ve been thinking about the connection between Excellence and People a little too much lately. I’m about halfway through my PhD thesis on the subject and besides the fact that my eyes may pop out of my head, I’ve seen some interesting connections.

Early results are showing three connections emerging from the data.

• A strategic approach to quality improves employee engagement
• A strategic approach to quality improves employee morale
• A strategic approach to quality improves employee satisfaction

So far I’ve collected data from a number of organizations and the correlations can be seen in the following scatter diagrams (if you want to learn about scatter diagrams check out last month’s article on how to create them: http://www.excellence.ca/en/knowledge-centre/articles/graphing-marathon-measures-3-scatter-diagram )

Quality and Engagement

So far the quality and employee engagement connection is the strongest relationship out of the factors I’m considering with a correlation of 0.753.  What this chart is saying is that as an organization is more committed to quality (higher quality scores) the level of engagement of staff also increases (higher engagement scores)

Quality and Morale

Quality and employee morale has the second strongest relationship out of the factors I’m considering with a correlation of 0.743. Similar to the previous chart as an organizations quality score increases so does the employee morale score.

Quality and Satisfaction

The connection between quality and employee satisfaction is significantly related with a correlation of 0.679. It happens to be the weakest out of the factors I’m exploring but similar to the other two charts as the organizations quality score increases so does the employee satisfaction score.

As I build this story further I’ll keep you posted.  To make the connections even stronger I need more organizations to participate in this research. To participate all you need to do is commit to sending the survey to a statistically valid sample of employees at your organization (we can figure out this number together).

Let me know if you want to participate.  Email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Benefit of participating.  Each participating organization will receive:

• A report with full results of the survey which measures both the organizations strategic commitment to quality and the impact on employees (satisfaction, engagement, morale)
• Comparison with database of other organizations for benchmarking purposes

Details of the Research

• Using a 65 question survey, targeted to various Canadian organizations, this research explores the specific relationship between a strategic approach to quality and three elements of employee measures including employee satisfaction, employee morale and employee engagement.
• The survey is structured into 3 sections.
• Section 1 includes a 37 question multidimensional construct that measures an organizations strategic commitment to quality. This construct is based on the criteria and principles of the Canadian, American, Australian, and European national excellence models.
• Section 2 includes a 24 question multidimensional construct that measures employee satisfaction, engagement, and morale. This construct is based on nine different models from leading edge research on these topics.
• Section 3 includes 4 personal attribute questions that are used as statistical variables in the analysis.
• Understanding the relationships between a strategic approach to quality and employee measures will help organizations, leadership teams, unions, and employees make decisions about the benefits and risks associated with adopting a strategic approach to quality management as it relates to employees.

Email me and I’ll get you set up to participate in this important research! This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it