They are designed and awarded by business for business. I believe that this is wrong and that the quality award system needs opening up so these issues can be addressed. Another criticism that is often made is that, while there has been an increase in the number of award points needed, this does not lead to improvement in the quality of the operation assessed and therefore has no bearing on improvement of the quality of the organization as a whole. This too merits discussion. The value of our congress is that it effectively provides a platform for discussion and debate, interactions, networking, and learning from each other which will hopefully lead to emergence of some new, cutting edge ideas.
Participants attend from all over the world.
Past congresses have seen representatives from over 20 different countries. This year there will be 10 representatives from Malaysia, and a dozen or so from Sweden, while ICL is sponsoring 54 of its people from all over the world as part of its education and training programmes. This model is based on my definition of business excellence and the ideas of core concepts and critical success factors. It is a structural model enabling me to measure the impact of leadership on overall business excellence and the contribution of leadership to, for example, people management, continuous improvement or the ability to delight the customer. It has related principles which include the ability to delight the customer, management facts, people management, and continuous improvement.