Throughout Alberta, Dawn Ringrose has seen significant gaps in the way businesses operate. Closer to home, she acknowledges that she, too, has had plenty to learn.

It helps explain the passion in her voice as she describes the role of the Quality Council of Alberta.

“It’s about excellence in business,” says Ringrose, who chairs the council.

“Our biggest challenge is to get the message out to communities what’s available. To me, it shouldn’t be such a well-kept secret.”

Council chair Dawn Ringrose sees ‘tremendous potential.’

The council is a member-driven not-for-profit society comprised of private and public organizations, from one- and two-employee shops to large players that include the provincial government, Syncrude and Telus.

“The one thing all the members have in common is a passion for excellence, for being the best they can be,” says Ringrose.

Under the umbrella of the Toronto-based National Quality Institute (www.nqi.ca) the council promotes what it calls the Excellence Framework. The framework, or model, is based on research with high-performing organizations throughout the world and focuses on a collection of best practices.

The six fundamental areas forming the framework are leadership; planning for improvement; customer focus; people focus; process management; and supplier focus.

Applicable to small-, mid-, and large-size public and private organizations, the model is similar to the Malcolm Baldridge criteria, a national quality program in the United States (www.quality.nist.gov).

In Alberta, the council is largely based in Edmonton where government, Western Diversification and Industry Canada influence membership numbers. In the past three years, volunteers have established a brown-bag lunch series to attract businesses that in turn help spread the message. (Ringrose says that, recently, a more concerted effort has been made to develop stronger Calgary connections.)

The council offers workshops, mentors, a referral service, a library for self- motivated learners and the opportunity to network, says Ringrose. People can also download the Excellence Framework free of charge.

Based in Edmonton, Ringrose operates two businesses, is a Certified Management Consultant, a Quality Auditor (ISO 9000) and has earned an MBA. She joined the provincial council when it was established a decade ago. As she began reading the council material, she began to understand that she had shortcomings.

“This model isn’t taught in a lot of business schools . . . or in the professional designations,” she says. “To me, this entire model should be readily available to all businesses.”

When she speaks to groups about the Excellence Framework and asks people if they are aware of it, the answer is resounding: No one has heard of it.

When she touches on the six key management areas, business people tell her that they have implemented 50 to 60 per cent of those practices.

“There’s plenty of room, tremendous potential, to implement the remaining practices and reap the benefits. And the benefits are substantial.”

The key area that is consistently underdeveloped is the practice surrounding process management – in other words, how businesses do their work.

The strategy involves defining a plan that everyone agrees on as to how the job should be done, says Ringrose. Whether the strategy is written down, plotted on a flowchart or formed as a checklist, the practice allows the business to consistently track its work and find where things break down.

As an indicator that businesses don’t pay enough attention to this process, Ringrose cites a recent study co-authored by the National Quality Institute and University of Waterloo. It suggests that 32 per cent of what businesses do doesn’t add value.

“In other words, why are we performing some of these tasks?” she asks.

As a practical example, Ringrose recalls that a Calgary company a few years ago surveyed its employees and asked this interesting question: “What’s the dumbest thing you do?”

Many workers answered the question. They performed tasks they’d always done, but really didn’t understand why. And while managers may not have liked what they heard, it forced them to address tasks that had no benefit and instead find ones that added value.

The Excellence Framework allows companies to measure how they perform in each of the six key areas. Once applied, businesses notice a transition, says Ringrose.

The first turnabout is that as communication within the organization improves, duplication is eliminated, and better ways of addressing cost of quality (errors, rework) are developed.

After the second year, businesses see improved bottom-line results. It doesn’t matter if it’s private sector or public sector, she says.