Team Showcase Overview

7 Steps to Success

Employee participation is one for the core values and concepts that make up the foundation for the Sterling Criteria for Performance Excellence and the Governor’s Sterling Award. An organization’s success depends increasingly on the knowledge, skills, and motivation of its work force. Successful organizations invest in the development of the work force through education, training, and opportunities for continuing growth.

Through the organization's work and job design, employees contribute effectively to achieving the organization’s performance objectives. How an organization engages and reinforces employee involvement becomes the key. Employee involvement is the practice that enables employees to regularly participate in making decisions on how their work is done, including making suggestions for improvement, planning, goal setting, and monitoring performance.

Teams, Teamwork, Teams-In-Action

The foundation of the Sterling Challenge and the Sterling Criteria for Performance Excellence and Governor’s Sterling Award.

The dynamics of people working together to truly understand problems or opportunities -- to analyze a condition with data and facts -- and to provide solutions that will favorably contribute to an organization’s performance doesn’t just happen. The dynamics, discipline, and results of teams are desired by all -- demonstrated by few. Skilled teams will provide a foundation to those organizations for the Sterling Challenge or Governor’s Sterling Award -- proven vehicles for performance excellence. Previous Governor’s Sterling Award recipients have found that continued use of a systematic process enhances the organization’s ability to meet future challenges.

Employees, teams, and their associated skills, surface in all categories of the Sterling Criteria for Performance Excellence process:

  1. Leadership
  2. Strategic Planning
  3. Customer Focus
  4. Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management
  5. Workforce Focus
  6. Operations Focus
  7. Results

The annual Sterling Conference Team Showcase provides a public forum for participative teams to demonstrate the principles and techniques of improving organizational performance through employee participation. Showcase attendees have a great opportunity to learn from the successes of others. Be there to help reward and recognize team members for their outstanding efforts.

Performance improvement and problem-solving teams may come from a wide variety of quality improvement methodologies and improvement approaches, such as Six-Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and Total Quality Management, and others.

Teams may be of many types, such as:

Problem-solving teams: There is a definite cause and effect relationship and one or more root causes with solutions.

Improvement teams: An existing product, service, process, or system within an organization is improved. There may be no root cause.

Innovative teams: A product, service, process, or system that is new to the organization is developed or installed.

Information

Team Showcase Criteria

For additional Team Showcase information, call the Sterling office at (850) 922-5316 or email Jim Sherlock at jsherlock@floridasterling.com.

The Florida Sterling Council
Post Office Box 13907
Tallahassee, FL 32317-3907