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The EFQM model

How can the efqm model support strategic choice or positioning?

AccessibleStrategicOrganisation2 min read

Contents

The EFQM model developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management is a model that helps to translate strategy into five organisational areas (‘leadership’.

The EFQM model connects strategy with five organisational ‘enablers’—leadership, policy and strategy, people, partnerships and resources, and processes—and four areas of results. Its underlying proposition is that aligned management practices produce better outcomes for customers, employees, society and the organisation.

When to use it

The framework began as a total-quality self-assessment and improvement method. It can now be used more broadly to examine organisational architecture, translate strategy into operating practice and identify performance gaps across public, private and non-profit organisations.

It is deliberately non-prescriptive. Instead of prescribing one structure, it asks how connected practices contribute to results. The original excellence principles include:

leadership and constancy of purpose;
management by processes and facts;
employee development and involvement;
continuous learning, innovation and improvement;
partnership development; and
public responsibility.

Origins

European business leaders created the European Foundation for Quality Management to strengthen organisational competitiveness through a shared excellence framework. The first EFQM model drew on total-quality management and major quality-award approaches, then evolved through successive editions as ideas about stakeholders, sustainability, transformation and performance developed.

What it is

How to use it

The version shown distinguishes five enablers and four result areas.

Leadership requires leaders to establish mission, vision and values; model an excellence culture; support improvement; engage customers, partners and society; and enable people to contribute.

Policy and strategy translate current and future stakeholder needs, performance evidence, research and learning into priorities that are developed, communicated and improved.

People covers workforce planning, capability, involvement, empowerment, communication, recognition and care. Knowledge and competence should be developed and sustained at every level.

Partnerships and resources includes external relationships, finance, facilities, materials, technology, information and knowledge.

Processes should be deliberately designed, managed and improved to create customer value, deliver suitable products and strengthen relationships.

The result areas are customer results, people results, society results and key performance results. They show what the organisation achieves for its stakeholders and whether the enablers are producing the intended strategic outcomes.

Begin by testing how the strategy appears in each enabler. Define the desired outcomes, measures and perception indicators in each result area. Compare actual with intended performance, identify important gaps and trace them back to practices that management can improve. Implement those changes structurally rather than as isolated corrective actions.

The feedback from results to enablers creates the learning loop. It connects ‘what we do’ with ‘what it produces’, allowing the organisation to revise both practice and strategy as evidence changes.

Final analysis

EFQM gives an organisation a common architecture for assessment, alignment and improvement. It can complement a balanced scorecard by linking outcome measures to the organisational practices expected to produce them.

The framework does not make strategic choices or diagnose causes on its own. Value comes from candid evidence, comparison and follow-through. Current guidance and self-assessment resources are available through the EFQM website (www.efqm.org).

Top practical tip

Trace each important result gap back to the enablers that can influence it, then assign an evidence-based improvement and owner.

Top pitfall

Do not optimise assessment scores or documentation at the expense of stakeholder outcomes and real operating improvement.