Fixing Your Improvement System: Moving Beyond Activity to Results

When improvement efforts stall, it’s rarely because teams aren’t trying. It’s usually because the system around them isn’t helping them focus, prioritize, or act on what the data is actually telling them.

In this practical, interactive session, Kay Kendall will walk through how to strengthen your improvement approach – using simple, accessible tools that help teams move from activity to results. Kay brings deep experience across industries – from manufacturing and technology to healthcare – and is known for making improvement methods usable in real-world settings. Her focus is straightforward: use the simplest approach that works so people can see, decide, and act quickly.

 The Performance Excellence Network — in partnership with Wisconsin Center for Performance Excellence and the Iowa Quality Center and in cooperation with the Greater Rochester NY Quality Council — is pleased to host an online webinar discussion on Thursday, June 25th: “Fixing Your Improvement System: Moving Beyond Activity to Results.”

During this session, you’ll:

• Clarify what your data is really telling you

• Move beyond lagging indicators to identify what actually predicts performance

• Prioritize the right improvement work

Learn simple ways to focus effort where it will have the greatest impact

• Strengthen root cause thinking

• Go beyond surface fixes to address the issues that keep recurring

• Use practical tools you can apply immediately

  • Including prioritization matrices, goal-setting approaches, and data analysis techniques (no complex math required)

• Engage your team in improvement

• Make it easier for people closest to the work to participate meaningfully

Throughout the session, you’ll have opportunities to apply what you’re learning in real time -interpreting data, reflecting on your own system, and identifying where your current approach may be getting stuck.

Kay will briefly reference QAPI (a healthcare improvement framework) and share tools from that system that translate well across industries, but the focus will be on your performance improvement system, whatever you call it.

If your organization is:

• working hard on improvement but not seeing sustained results

• unsure where to focus next

• or looking for more practical ways to use data in decision-making that maintains trust and alignment.

this session will give you clear, usable next steps.

About our Speaker

Kay Kendall, CPHQ is CEO and Principal of Baldrige Coach, where she helps organizations strengthen leadership, align strategy, and build improvement systems that deliver measurable results.

She brings more than 20 years of experience leading large‑scale performance improvement efforts across industries including aerospace, manufacturing, computing, and pharmaceuticals. A recognized expert in the Baldrige Excellence Framework, Kay has served as a Judge for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and as a longtime examiner and leader within the Baldrige community.

Known for her practical, no‑nonsense approach, Kay focuses on helping leaders turn quality and performance concepts into tools and decisions they can apply immediately. She is also co‑author of Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way, which highlights how high‑performing organizations align their systems to achieve sustained results.”

JOIN US FOR THIS PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE NETWORK (PEN) WEBINAR

Date: Thursday, June 25

Time:  9:00 - 10:00 am (ET)

Location:  On-line, via Zoom

Cost:  Free to GRQC members and non-members

Registration:  Click below to register.  Note:  Registration may not work with Internet Explorer; please use a currently supported browser.

Can’t make it live but interested in the content?  Register anyway: all registered attendees get a link to the recording after the session!

Please direct any questions to events@grqc.org.