SPQA Chair Letter

This post considers Deming’s view of leadership as an intentional, measurable, and improvable system of practice. 

Dr. Edwards Deming, born in 1900, was one of the most influential figures in the international quality movement. In his book, Out of the Crisis, he included 14 points for management. He stated that leadership’s job is to create the conditions so people can do good work—not to inspect, judge, or punish. The role of management is to lead, not merely supervise. Leadership must help people and systems to do a better job by removing barriers, enabling learning, and improving processes. Foremost, is that leaders must take responsibility for the system, create a learning environment, and use data to guide improvement. The Baldrige Framework incorporates many of these leadership principles in a deep and structural way across several categories.  

1.1 Senior Leadership  

Baldrige explicitly defines leadership as a systemic responsibility to:

    • create mission, vision, and values that set a clear direction
    • model behaviors that promote excellence and learning 
    • remove obstacles to performance 
    • ensure governance, transparency, and accountability 
    • foster innovation and intelligent risk-taking 
    • create an environment that ensures workforce engagement 

5.1 Workforce Environment 

    • creating supportive, safe, and constructive workplaces 
    • ensuring the right tools, training, and resources are available 
    • designing work systems so people can be successful 

5.2 Workforce Engagement 

    • leaders listen to employees 
    • leaders act on workforce input 
    • leaders remove barriers to high performance 
    • leaders support professional and personal development 

6.1 Work Processes 

    • leaders design and improve processes to achieve excellence 
    • leaders use data, learning, and innovation to manage systems 
    • leaders encourage root‑cause analysis rather than fault‑finding 

6.2 Operational Effectiveness 

    • removing variation that harms performance 
    • improving workflow and productivity through systems thinking


Several Baldrige CORE VALUES institutionalize Deming’s thinking: 

    • Visionary Leadership 
    • Systems Perspective 
    • Valuing People 
    • Learning and Agility 
    • Focus on Success 
    • Management by Fact 

Within the framework scoring guidelines, the emphasis is on leadership as a capability and not a personality trait. The scoring rubric expects: 

    • aligned leadership approaches (systemic, not ad hoc) 
    • cycles of evaluation and improvement (PDSA) 
    • leadership learning (reflecting Deming’s continual learning culture) 
    • integration (leadership actions aligned across processes, workforce, and results) 

Sincerely,

James (Jim) Spengler
March 2026