Business Excellence is a holistic management approach, touching almost every aspect of an organisation in a systematic way, aiming to continuous improvement. Looking to the Oxford dictionary, “to excel” is referred to as “to be exceptionally good at something”. In Greek there is the word “ARISTON” which simply means… “the best”. So, this is an approach to lead an organisation to excellence, to become ARISTON, to become the best, following a continues improvement process.

The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) has played a leading role in Europe regarding business excellence. Since its establishment in 1988 has developed many approaches for deploying excellence in organisations i.e. driving them to become the best in their field. The well-known EFQM Business Excellence Model and the prestigious EFQM Excellence Award are two of the ownerships of the foundation that are greatly recognised in Europe and worldwide. Business excellence in Europe is more or less synonymous to EFQM. In other regions have similar establishments like the Malcom Baldridge Award (USA) and the Deming Award (Japan).

Now, in parallel there is another, convergent path; that of Quality Management mostly represented by ISO standards (Interational Standards Organisation). ISO9000 series being the most famous. They deal mainly in ensuring quality in production and/or delivery of a product/service, and gradually assimilated to excellence models.

My personal journey to the Business Excellence world started in 1999 when I had my first contact with the EFQM and its Model. Cyta’s Larnaca Customer Services, which I have been working, was the first business unit in Cyprus to use the model for self-assessment. Later (May2000) I have been trained in Greece by qualified consultants, as an internal assessor of the model. In 2003, I had my first official assessment training at the EFQM headquarters, in Belgium. Since 2003 and every year I participated to the EFQM Excellence Award as an assessor and since 2005 the EFQM trusted me to lead an assessment teams as a Senior Assessor (the award was at first called EQA – European Quality Award- and then changed to EEA – EFQM Excellence Award. Similarly the assessor leading the assessment team was at first called Senior and later an ATL – Assessment Team Leader).

Very briefly, what happens every year is the announcement of the Award by EFQM. Organisations apply to it and the EFQM forms teams to assess them on site with respect to its Model. The teams prepare a Feedback Report and provide a score. Later on the EFQM Jury decides on who is winning what.

Here are a few photos from my journey to Business Excellence over the years:

More photos soon…