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Employees provide service around the gram. It took a few years for the City to hit Baldrige National Quality Award.
internal motto of “Excellence, Every its stride and finally get organization-wide Aiming for the National Award
day.” Core values of delivering service ex- momentum heading in the same direction.
cellence, providing A+ results and leading Feedback from TNCPE helped identify In 2019, the City set its sights on the
responsibly have simplified and improved opportunities for improvement and direct national award. A 55-page application was
internal culture. The community rating efforts toward systematic change. developed covering all seven categories of
for satisfaction with employee ethical be- the Baldrige criteria. Over the summer,
havior has been above 95% since 2014 and The turning point was the German- a team of highly-trained independent
was approaching 100% in 2018. town Forward 2030 strategic plan. “We examiners reviewed the City’s application
had all been working hard at driving and determined that Germantown was
Pursuit of the Baldrige Award improvement, but GF2030 really put it all worthy of further review. Out of 26 appli-
For the City of Germantown, the quest in perspective for us,” said City Admin- cants, only 12 received a site visit.
istrator Patrick Lawton. Soon after, the
for quality is an ongoing process, and this City launched an online performance In October, City staff hosted a team of
recognition is just another milestone in a dashboard to track strategic progress and nine Baldrige examiners for a week-long
journey that has been years in the making. Individual Employee Development plans, deep dive into City operations. The team
“The work that we have done wouldn’t which tie daily work to strategic objec- interviewed leaders, reviewed documents,
have been possible without the guidance tives. As performance improvement be- clarified and verified their findings from
and vision provided by our fearless leader, came more of a habit, the term “Baldrige” the initial application and visited with
Patrick Lawton,” said General Services Di- faded into the background. employees from across the organization.
rector Reynold Douglas. “His longevity as
Germantown City Administrator and his “As an organization, we stopped limit- “I was honored to have been asked to
commitment to ignore the status quo has ing ourselves and using the fact that we represent the City during a formal inter-
been invaluable in this process. It is truly are a government as an excuse,” said view with examiners,” said Reggie Cash, a
an honor to be a part of his team.” Budget and Financial Services Director Master Technician with the City’s award-
Adrienne Royals. “It’s like one day we de- winning fleet team. “It felt great to share
Lawton returned from a conference in cided to be one of the best organizations about our passion for the great work we
2010 with plans to implement Baldrige in the country, and we went for it.” In 2017 do here.”
criteria as a means to help Germantown the City received the Excellence Award,
weather the aftermath of the 2008 reces- the top honor from Tennessee Center for Following the site visit, the long waiting
sion. The City quickly became involved Performance Excellence and an unofficial period ensued. “We all felt really positive
with the Tennessee Center for Performance prerequisite for applying for the Malcolm about our visit,” said IT Director Tony
Excellence, the state-based Baldrige pro- Fischer. “We were able to tell the story
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