Larry Potterfield, Founder and CEO of two-time Baldrige National Quality Award recipient MidwayUSA and winner of the 2018 E. David Spong Lifetime Achievement Award.
Washington -- The Baldrige Foundation announced today that Larry Potterfield, Founder and CEO of MidwayUSA, is the recipient of the 2018 E. David Spong Lifetime Achievement Award. The award will be presented April 10, 2018, at the 30th Quest for Excellence® conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
“This award recognizes an individual who has performed truly extraordinary service and made a sustained impact which will inspire future generations of leaders in the pursuit of Baldrige,” said Foundation President and CEO Al Faber. “Larry Potterfield is the embodiment of those values, and we are honored to present him with this award.”
“Baldrige is simply applying the Leadership and Management principles we learned in business school,” said Potterfield. “It requires actual ‘execution’ of our strategic plan, deploying our Mission, Vision, Purpose, and Values and demonstrating an utmost focus on Customer Satisfaction. We have received two Baldrige Awards (2009 and 2015) and our Customers and other Key Stakeholders are absolutely delighted. For continuous improvement and focus on the Customer, there’s nothing quite like Baldrige.”
In addition to making Baldrige part of the day-to-day functioning of his very successful company, Mr. Potterfield freely and gladly shares his experience with and enthusiasm for Baldrige with organizational leaders and Baldrige practitioners across the country.
“Larry has served as an ambassador and champion for the Baldrige Framework,” continued Faber, “but he doesn’t just talk the talk. In 2013, Larry made a $1 million pledge —still active— to be paid to the first Missouri K-12 public school district that receives the Baldrige National Quality Award. Larry’s commitment to Baldrige, Missouri public schools, and the greater Baldrige community is precisely what this award is intended to underscore.”
Baldrige is a leadership and management framework with a systems level, customer driven organizational assessment and design approach that has proven to enhance the performance of organizations across every sector of the economy compared to their non-Baldrige peers. Baldrige generates an empirically-documented return on investment of $820 in cost savings and performance enhancements for each $1 spent supporting the Baldrige Enterprise. To review the relevant data, click here: https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/how-baldrige-works/about-baldrige/baldrige-impactst
