ExcellenceNorth Alliance Evolves

Gerri King, Ph. D speaks at the ExcellenceNorth Alliance 2019 Leadership Summit – Navigating Generational Expectations. Courtesy photo.

After 27 years helping businesses improve their processes, client services and culture, the Granite State Quality Council changed its name to ExcellenceNorth Alliance.  

The executive director, Anne Warner, says, “In a rapidly changing and more dynamic environment, you need to stand out.” 

She adds that part of the organization’s evolution is that they now focus on helping businesses stand out.

The Alliance, which serves NH, Maine and Vermont, is a nonprofit that uses the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, among other programs, to identify a business’s inefficiencies and transform them into “optimized performance systems that build and sustain success for the long-term.” 

They do so by providing coaching, training, networking, sharing of best business practices and providing assessments. And they help their clients with strategic planning, workforce engagement, improving performance and leveraging organizational strengths into opportunities for improvement.

Warner says the Alliance’s “secret sauce” is its ability to look holistically at organizations and to ensure all the connections are made to facilitate overall excellence. “It’s a framework for business excellence,” she says. “We help organizations be the best they can be. We work toward their true North.”

ExcellenceNorth has experts on hand who address a range of issues although businesses are always in control of the process, she stresses. “The organization is the driver of the bus. They decide how fast or slow to go and whether we stop at a certain point,” Warner says.

Through the process, organizations examine three vital questions: What is important to your organization? What is its purpose? What are the needs of the workforce? A self-assessment looks at culture, key customers, strategic challenges and advantages. “It makes for more efficient and effective decision making,” Warner says.

The Alliance is seeking to incorporate its approach into the curricula of the University of NH, Southern NH University and NH’s community college system, she says.

For more information, visit excellencenorth.org.