Bridge to Excellence: Building Capacity for Sustainable Performance

Since 2008, the Bridge to Excellence model has been leveraged to help thousands of leaders discuss how to achieve and repeat great organizational results, know precisely what is creating the results, develop confidence in the system capacity to prevent undesirable outcomes and recover when they do occur, and to create an organizational culture dedicated to this pursuit, with a shared mindset that regardless of how well the organization is performing, continuous improvement is always possible.

Author Shawn M. Galloway is passionate about helping leaders achieve excellence in their organizational safety performance and culture. But the more he spoke with leaders about the Bridge and helped them implement it for their organizations, the clearer it became that this was not just a pathway to pursuing excellence in occupational safety. Leaders at all levels realize that the Bridge concept can be applied to production, human resources, and sales, to departments, units, and plants, to teams and one-on-one associations, to relationships between leadership, management, and workers, to just about everything having to do with an organization and its operations. Most crucially, it is used to enhance the organization’s ability to thrive in a competitive, ever-changing, and always-challenging world.

Throughout the book, you will gain insights directly from senior leaders across many industries: AQRA Group, Buckeye Partners, LP, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Cardinal FG, CertainTeed, CF Industries, ChampionX, East Dubuque Nitrogen Fertilizers, Essity Operations France, Ethostory, Fernelius and Simon, GATX, Georgia Power, Hess Corporation, Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Shaw Industries, ShowBox Exhibits, Spec’s Wine, Spirits & Finer Foods, and the US Navy.

The Bridge to Excellence is not just a means of getting your organization from the beginning to the end of a particular journey. It is the organization. It is simultaneously the path to improvement, the people taking that path, and the people maintaining, building, and rebuilding the path. Every organization’s Bridge should change significantly over time. It must change: it must be periodically redesigned, if for no other reason than that the erosion of time constantly pushes back the destination, Sustainable Excellence, and your Bridge must be extended accordingly.

As you’ll learn, every organization has a Bridge, whether you know it or not, whether you utilize it or not. The question is, does your Bridge take your organization across the roiling rivers of competition, technological change, evolving customer preferences, workforce changes, supply chain disruptions, pandemics, regulation, and more? Does it carry you over all of this to the goal of Sustainable Excellence, or does it take you somewhere else? Discover how to build and maintain the capacity for sustained performance and sustained excellence.