Article contributed by Saad Ghafoor, PhD Student COER, and Dr Robin Mann. Head, COER

The New Zealand Business Excellence Foundation NZBEF organized the Performance Excellence Conference on 19th and 20th March 2019. The conference was held in the Waipuna Hotel and Conference Centre in Auckland with speakers and participants from various parts of New Zealand and from overseas. The conference promised to be a very exciting meet-up for business excellence professionals and enthusiasts. The New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) showed particular interest in the conference with a large number of NZDF staff attending the conference.
 
The participants of the conference were able to learn about global business excellence practices and make sense around how adopting business excellence would help their organisations improve. Speakers from Australia, Canada, Chile, and New Zealand educated the audience about the present state of business excellence in their respective areas of responsibilities and the challenges that organisations are experiencing by ignoring it. The conference was very educational for those that were new to the idea of business excellence.

The conference was mediated by Joe Hollander – Master of Ceremonies during the presentations and discussions/ question answer sessions that followed them.

The presentation was enriched with a brief presentation on the project Excellence Without Borders by Saad Ghafoor and some of its initial findings. Other domestic/ New Zealand speakers were Bernard Powell, Carew Hatherley, Anthony Stephenson, Keith Phillips and Michael Voss. The international speakers were Dawn Ringrose from Canada, Jorge Roman from Chile, Ravi Fernando, Mike Mclean, and Dianne Gibert from Australia.

The panelists discussed the operational challenges for adopting business excellence. The participants took particular interest in this discussion and asked questions relating to their organizations’ day-to-day business. Most of the questions from the attendees were around how they can localize the practices or principles of business excellence such that they are applicable to the New Zealand work environment.
 
The conference ended with a clear commitment by the NZBEF and its participants that the focus on excellence needs to be re-energised otherwise NZ Inc would lose its international competitiveness against other countries where business excellence has become the norm. As such the NZBEF is calling for New Zealand organisations to join its foundation with a new website just launched.
 
The BPIR.com is supporting NZBEF and the worldwide focus on excellence. Our new series of 50+ Best Practice Reports will be covering one by one all the criteria items of Business Excellence Models – thus providing the building blocks towards world-class performance.
 
To start this off we have published a Best Practice Report on Business Excellence to provide an overview of what it is and share its current status. If you or your organization are striving for a destination of excellence consider supporting our research by joining the BPIR.com today.