Assignment: Sterling Challenge Criteria

Category 1 Leadership

The Leadership category asks how senior leaders' personal actions guide and sustain your organization. It also asks about your organization's governance system; how your organization fulfills its legal, ethical, and societal responsibilities; and how it supports its key communities.

Answer the following questions in your assessment:

1. How do senior leaders set and communicate your organization's vision and values?

2. How do senior leaders create an environment for learning, performance improvement, and innovation to guide and sustain your organization?

3. How do senior leaders communicate with the workforce and encourage high performance and a customer and business focus?

4. What are your organization's governance system and processes for management and financial accountability, transparency in operations, and senior leader performance evaluation?

5. How does your organization promote and ensure legal and ethical behavior in all interactions?

6. How does your organization fulfill its societal responsibilities and support its key communities?

Category 2 Strategic Planning

The Strategic Planning category asks how your organization develops strategic objectives and action plans, implements them, changes them if circumstances require, and measures progress.

Answer the following questions in your assessment:

1. How do you conduct strategic planning, including key steps, participants, and short- and longer- term planning horizons?

2. How do you use data, information, and comparative data to determine and address strategic opportunities, challenges, and advantages?

3. How do you determine key work systems and core competencies and use these in making work system decisions, including what work you will do internally and what you will outsource?

4. How do you develop strategic objectives? Summarize your organization's key strategic objectives and their related goals.

5. How do you convert strategic objectives into action plans and communicate these? Summarize your organization's key action plans, and action plan performance measures or indicators.

6. How do you allocate resources or ensure financial and other resources are available to support the achievement of your action plans?

7. How do you monitor progress against your objectives, and make changes to action plans when needed?

Category 3 Customer Focus

The Customer Focus category asks how your organization engages its customers for long-term marketplace success, including how your organization listens to the voice of the customer, builds customer relationships, and uses customer information to improve and to identify opportunities for innovation.

Answer the following questions in your assessment:

1. How do you listen to the voice of the customer?

2. How do you determine customer requirements for products/services and communication methods to support customers?

3. How do you build and manage customer relationships?

4. How do you determine customer satisfaction and engagement and use this information to make improvements?

5. How do you manage and resolve customer complaints and recover their confidence?

Category 4 Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management

The Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management category asks how your organization selects, gathers, analyzes, and manages its data, information, and knowledge assets; how it learns; and how it manages information technology. The category also asks how your organization uses review findings to improve its performance.

Answer the following questions in your assessment:

1. How do you measure, analyze, review, and improve performance through the use of data and information at all levels and in all parts of your organization?

2. What are your key organizational performance measures?

3. How do you select comparative data and use it effectively to support decision making?

4. How do you identify internal operations that are high performing and select and share their best practices with other areas of your organization?

5. How do you build and manage knowledge assets?

6. How do you ensure the quality and availability of needed data, information, software, and hardware for your workforce, suppliers, partners, collaborators, and customers and ensure availability in the event of an emergency?

Category 5 Workforce Focus

The Workforce Focus category asks how your organization assesses workforce capability and capacity needs and builds a workforce environment conducive to high performance. The category also asks how your organization engages, manages, and develops your workforce to utilize its full potential in alignment with your organization's overall mission, strategy, and action plans.

Answer the following questions in your assessment:

1. How do you manage workforce capability and capacity to accomplish the work of the organization?

2. How do you recruit, hire, place, and retain new workforce members?

3. How do you maintain a healthy, secure, and supportive work climate?

4. How do you engage, compensate, recognize and reward your workforce to achieve high performance?

5. How do you assess workforce engagement and use the results to achieve higher performance?

6. How are members of your workforce, including leaders, developed to achieve high performance?

7. How do you manage effective career progression and succession planning including the transfer of knowledge from departing or retiring workforce members?

Category 6 Operations Focus

The Operations Focus category asks how your organization designs, manages, and improves its products, services, and work processes and improves operational effectiveness to deliver customer value and achieve organizational success and sustainability.

Answer the following questions in your assessment:

1. How do you design your products/services and the key work processes that deliver these, and determine key product/service requirements and key work process requirements?

2. How do you manage, measure, and improve key work processes and support processes to improve performance and reduce variability?

3. How do you control the overall costs of your operations?

4. How do you manage supplier performance?

5. How do you provide a safe operating environment and ensure workplace preparedness for disasters or emergencies?

Category 7 Results

The Results category asks about your organization's performance and improvement in all key areas- product and process results, customer-focused results, workforce-focused results, leadership and governance results, and financial and market results. The category asks about performance levels relative to those of competitors and other organizations with similar product offerings.

Provide results that address the following questions in your assessment:

1. What are your organization's key product/service performance and process effectiveness and efficiency results? Include processes that directly serve customers, strategy, and operations (including emergency preparedness and supply chain management). Segment your results by product /service offerings, by customer groups and market segments, and by process types and locations as appropriate. Include appropriate comparative data.

2. What are your organization's key customer-focused results for customer satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and engagement? Segment your results by product/service offerings, customer groups, and market segments, as appropriate. Include appropriate comparative data.

3. What are your organization's key workforce-focused results for workforce environment and for your workforce engagement? Segment your results to address the diversity of your workforce and to address your workforce groups and segments, as appropriate. Include appropriate comparative data.

4. What are your organization's key senior leadership and governance results, including those for fiscal accountability, legal compliance, ethical behavior, societal responsibility, support of key communities, and strategy implementation? Segment your results by organizational units, as appropriate. Include appropriate comparative data.

5. What are your organization's key financial and marketplace performance results by market segments or customer groups, as appropriate? Include appropriate comparative data.