What matters to your patrons might surprise you
If you were an aficionado of the “Business” section of your local bookstore (remember them?) beginning in the 1980s, you probably saw shelves full of titles with the latest and greatest ways to measure quality and improve business output.
Quality Circles, which actually began in Japan in the 1960s, gathered teams of people from different disciplines in a company to pinpoint issues and opportunities, and recommend solutions. "Management by Walking Around" espoused the wisdom that managers do a better job of finding needs and fixing issues if they regularly get off their duffs and talk to the front-line staff.
Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in 1986, and sought to train people (who would seek Six Sigma "black belt" status) to improve quality and ferret out waste. When Jack Welch from GE fell in love with it, the rest was history.
Through it all, however, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program has remained a brass ring that enterprising companies with the patience and persistence to see the process through have long reached for.
While, like the other quality processes, Baldrige has typically been associated in the public eye with manufacturing, its application within service-type businesses (such as K-12) is just as valuable. Some school districts have taken the plunge, while others look at the process’ complexity and can’t imagine how it would be possible to take the plunge in a time of smaller staffs and even smaller budgets.
Yet, the ideas behind Baldrige – most notably, understanding the wants and needs of your customers, and adjusting your practices accordingly – are concepts any school district should be strategically tackling right now. The time to find out whether you are in sync with your patrons’ expectations is well before you need support at the ballot box, with a boundary issue or any other systemic challenge.
Getting this input needn’t be a daunting assignment.
First, identify the data you want/need, by determining how you will use the information. Almost every Patron Insight research planning session finds us asking a well-meaning school district leader, "How do you think you would use that data?" on a suggestion of theirs that would fit under the category of "just curious." At the core, your efforts should be focused on determining what your patrons use to judge your district’s quality. Anything else should be subject to a strident "How will we use that?" litmus test.
Second, determine your research methodology. Random telephone surveys (of landlines and cell phone numbers) will produce the most statistically valid representation of true patron opinion, because they blend the opinions of the passionate and the more blasé. You can supplement such a survey with an online version for "captive audiences," such as staff, parents, etc. While the statistical reliability isn’t quite the same (because such methods attract the more actively interested members of the audience), it is helpful information, nonetheless.
Third, determine your format. Patron Insight has found that presenting a list of characteristics and asking respondents to rate their personal top three or four is the easiest way to build baseline data. Just remember that "teacher quality," or something similar, will probably be number one. So, you’ll want to at least go three deep to get a sense of what’s below the surface.
The message: Even if you’re not quite ready to jump in the Baldrige pool completely, dipping your toe in with a simple process like this will help you better connect with what really matters to your patrons.
