The document serves as a primer on the EFQM model, emphasizing the importance of sustainable excellence for organizations by defining excellence and detailing the practices high-performing organizations adopt across various categories including leadership, strategy, and people. It outlines good practices and principles essential for achieving and sustaining superior organizational performance that meets stakeholders' expectations. Additionally, it provides a structured approach with steps for success and highlights the significance of continuous improvement and stakeholder engagement.

1. The EFQM Model –A primer
Sustainable Growth:
-Imperatives for 2020 and
beyond
Extracts from the workshop materials of our 2012 Practical Excellence
Workshops are shared here for use as a primer on the EFQM model.
If you‟d like to join us at a 2012 Event go to:
http://www.leadershipagenda.com/training-workshops.html
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2. Is Sustainable Excellence Important?
Rear View (exploiting Forward View (Responsiveness
resources or positioning) and agility to seize opportunity)
Predictable change Unpredictable change
Better execution of Faster adoption of
old concepts new concepts
Standing Still is not an option, challenging and learning are essential
organisational competencies
Excellence Models can help:
• Engage all stakeholders in a review of organisational +/-
• Understand coherency and depth of strategy implementation
• Compare with others and learn
• Create a common vocabulary
• Drive future performance
• Get you recognition…..
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3. How should we define Excellence?
Begin with the proven thinking of others, EFQM defines it in this way:
“Excellent organisations achieve and sustain
superior levels of performance that meet or
exceed the expectations of all their
stakeholders”
 “Achieving” Excellence is one thing, “sustaining” it is another level of challenge; it means that
superior performance must be seen to be maintained over time.
 “Superior” is a contextual word, where context is given by reviewing performance both quantitatively
and qualitatively, with competitors and proven leading edge organisations both from the same sphere
as your organisation and from other sectors
 “All stakeholders” brings added meaning, it is not just about meeting or exceeding the expectations
of one stakeholder group but, for long term success, a balance must be obtained with all groups with
a vested interest in the success of the organisation (i.e. its “Owners”, its Customers, its People and
the Society in which it operates).
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4. EFQM is …
 Non-for-profit, started in
1989
 Owners of the EFQM
Excellence Model
 Engaging
organisations, leading
collaborative exchange
 Creating
assessment/recognition/cer
tification networks
 Led by business leaders
 Core team in Brussels –
thousands around the
globe
 Worth joining (see
www.efqm.org)
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5. Assess yourself with the EFQM Model?
The Aim: “Achieve and sustain superior levels of
performance that meet or exceed the expectations of
all stakeholders.”
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6. 1. Leadership
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7. Good Practices: -Leadership
In our experience Leaders in high performing organisations put emphasis on:
• Showing that they “Know what they expect” and ensure everyone “knows how they will realise it”.
• Personally meeting with, and knowing the needs and expectations of, their key stakeholders.
• Respecting, understanding and transparently engaging with people at all levels in the organisation
and its Key Partners, Alliances, Customers and Suppliers.
• Stimulating and participating in innovative and creative thinking by personally using the
improvement methodologies provided for their people, thereby role modelling desired behaviours.
• Understanding how their leadership behaviour influences others and using fact-based processes to
obtain feedback on their personal and collective leadership behaviour.
• Understanding what motivates and de-motivates their people and teams and aligning their reward
and recognition processes with such expectations in mind.
• Creating transparent, efficient and effective governance and management systems, ensuring that
clear roles and accountabilities are assigned.
• Maintaining foresight of a range of change scenarios, both positive and negative, that may affect
the organisation and building awareness in their people and other stakeholders of the likely
changes needed were these to occur.
• Ensuring that people act with integrity and values and confront any variances.
• Coaching and supporting other leaders at all levels.
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8. 2. Strategy
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9. Good Practices: -Strategy
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations are:
 Effective at acquiring, analysing, and widely disseminating reliable stakeholder and market focused information and
anticipating the impact of potential conflicts resulting from their attempted balancing of the needs and priorities of
different stakeholders
 Tracking the competitive, environmental, societal, economic, and demographic factors, which may change
stakeholder behaviour and create opportunity or risk.
 Creating a range of future scenarios to sensitise managers to potential opportunities/risks and help strategic
planning.
 Understanding their current performance/competences and which future core business competencies will likely
enable success in the scenarios they foresee.
 Maintaining a framework of key processes to deliver strategy and develop needed competencies.
 Realising that strategic and operational speed may be important and using cycle time as a driver so rapid
deployment can occur.
 Strategically reviewing past achievements, or failures, and attempting to understand causality.
 Predicting what are the key results that will most likely drive their future success and managing them closely.
 Communicating strategies, policies and plans to key stakeholders, monitoring their performance and listening to
their feedback.
 Operating plans, budgets and performance review and reward processes that recognises strategically relevant
outcomes and efforts .
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10. 3. People
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11. Good Practices: -People
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Developing people numbers and capabilities consistent with strategy and policy to meet current, emerging and
future business needs.
 Ensuring organisational structures are aligned with key processes, and that clarity of people roles and
accountabilities exists within the structure.
 Ensuring that team and individual reward/recognition is aligned with cascaded strategic goals.
 Being willing to confront non-performance, initially with supportive coaching, counselling and support.
 Having clarity on the degree of empowerment that they believe is appropriate and making this clear with guidance
and clear boundaries.
 Having robust succession plans for key posts.
 Systematically identifying the communication expectations of different parts of the organisation and implementing
structured plans to manage or satisfy these expectations.
 Using surveys and other forms of employee feedback/monitoring to get insights on employee‟s satisfaction and
motivation.
 Understand the contribution of people to the organisation‟s success, their needs and expectations and how best to
be able to care for them.
 Creating a culture where creativity and innovation is valued, improvement is the norm, and competent failure can
be accepted.
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12. 4. Partnership and Resources
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13. Good Practices: -Partnerships and Resources
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Conducting regular measurement and systematic reviews of the relationships with key partners,
including the potential use of the expertise of suppliers and partners in the design of new products
and services.
 Understanding the financing needs for both current and multiple future strategies.
 Understanding the external controls on financial flexibility that are needed to demonstrate ethical
and transparent governance but with maximum freedom to operate within the organisation.
 Monitoring and managing improvement of financial systems.
 Maintaining building, materials and equipment strategies linked to future strategic growth needs.
 Regularly reviewing the use of materials, work in progress and inventory.
 Tracking and evaluating trends in technology and knowledge and have appropriately robust
processes to manage the intellectual property of their own processes and knowledge.
 Having a strategy for managing knowledge
 Operating processes to ensure that information validity, availability, integrity and security /
confidentiality are assured
 Assessing and developing the environmental performance of the organisation and its suppliers.
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14. 5. Processes, Products and Services
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15. Good Practices: -Processes, Products and Services
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Having high-level process maps to describe the structure, linkages and operation of all key
processes.
 Having assigned owners, responsibilities and standards for all processes.
 Developing products and services in a structured way.
 Having innovation management systems.
 Using valid process level performance targeting techniques.
 Understanding and communicating the value proposition, features and benefits of the
organisation's products and services to current and potential marketplaces.
 Monitoring and overseeing that promises made are delivered.
 Ensuring ever improving product and service consistency.
 Managing products and services throughout their entire life-cycle considering environmental
impacts where appropriate.
 Developing customer relationships and an acuity for diagnosing unmet customer or market needs,
as well as general process improvements.
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16. Tests of Good KPI management
1. Do the KPI‟s have a clearly accountable owner at senior
level?
2. Are they primarily controllable by the owner?
3. Do they have a significant impact on desired performance?
4. Are they aligned to strategy/portfolio level objectives?
5. Are they an appropriate mixture of leading and lagging
indicators?
6. Are they really built down, not around?
7. Are they SMART?
8. Are they regularly measured reported?
9. Is the data reliable?
10. Are performance related issues and opportunities being
acted upon?
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17. 6. Customer Results
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18. Good Practices: -Customer Results
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Seeing themselves as their Customers see them.
 Understand both the needs and expectations of those who they regard as Customers.
 Have a focus on the key data sets that are the most important to manage
 Constantly hunt for latent or unmet Customer needs.
 Understand what is likely to drive/enable future Customer loyalty and satisfaction
 Identify and manage Enablers and related data to help drive performance in areas of
the business likely to drive enhanced Customer Results.
 Have clarity on the reasons for choosing the benchmark organisations/comparative
data sets that are used.
 Track and act on both long and short-term priorities for customers
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19. 7. People Results
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20. Good Practices: -People Results
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Seeing themselves as their People see them.
 Segmenting the analysis of people data by organisational units/levels/sectors, to
ensure that insights, resources, and improvement activity are appropriately targeted
 Being seen to understand/act upon the reasons for successes and shortfalls
 Understanding what is likely to drive/enable motivation and satisfaction needed for the
future and there-by have a focus on the Enablers to review and manage.
 Understanding what will be needed to gain or retain “talent” in the future, if it is
different to that of today, and how this may effect the tracking and monitoring of
People satisfaction and motivation.
 Have clarity on the reasons for choosing the benchmark organisations/comparative
data sets that are used.
 Track and act on both long and short-term priorities for People.
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21. 8. Society Results
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22. Good Practices: -Society Results
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Understanding the risk/opportunities that Societal performance may create for the organisations
“Brand” .
 Understanding and obtaining broad stakeholder engagement.
 Having governance processes that embrace and measure Human Rights, Labour Practices, The
Environment, Fair Operating Practices, Product Responsibility, Consumer Issues, and Community
Involvement and Development.
 Identifying a range of societal perception measures and tracking data which will provide insights as to
how their organisation functions and is perceived in the societies it operates in, or impacts upon.
 Understand the causes of trends, over time, in the results.
 Compare their organisation‟s societal performance to targets and understand/act upon the reasons for
successes and shortfalls.
 Compare their performance to that of others/ „best in class‟ organisations.
 Segment the analysis of societal data by local, regional, national or global dimensions, as appropriate
to the operations/products/services involved.
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23. 9. Key Results
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24. Good Practices: -Key Results
In our analyses we find that high performing organisations put emphasis on:
 Defining and agreeing with key stakeholders the relevant financial measures that will track the
deployment/achievement of their chosen strategies. (these will typically include profit and loss,
balance sheet, cash flow, and shareholder value-added in commercial organisations, and
performance against budgets in non-commercial areas)
 Defining a set of key non-financial measures that are indicative of success with the key strategic
aims defined in the organisation‟s Strategy and Policies (depending on the type of organisation and
its strategy these may include measures such as market share, innovation rates, learning,
breakthrough project activities, flexibility, and responsiveness to change)
 Track and understand the causes of trends, over time, in the results above
 Compare their performance to their strategies, targets and plans, in order to understand/act upon
the reasons for successes and shortfalls
 Understand what is likely to drive/enable future success
 Segment their data by organisational units/level/sectors to ensure that insights, resources, and
improvement activity are appropriately targeted;
 Compare their performance to that of competitors and/or „best in class‟ organisations;

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25. Seven Steps to Success
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26. Seven Steps to Success
Step 1: Agree and Share the Aims
Step 2: Get “Everyone on Board”
Step 3: Frame the Scope and Strategic Context
Step 4: Assign Roles, Responsibilities and Accountabilities
Step 5: Create Sound Plans
Step 6: Overcome Road-Blocks
Step 7: Prepare for and use the resultant analyis
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27. Use Mapping Templates
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28. For Results
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29. Practical Excellence 2012 Events
Sustainable Growth:
-Imperatives for 2020 and
beyond
Extracts from the workshop materials are shared here for use as a primer on the EFQM model.
If you’d like to know more and join us at a 2012 Event go to:
http://www.leadershipagenda.com/training-workshops.html
© 28
Q1 2012