Florida Governor's Sterling Award

The Governor’s Sterling Award, given by the Florida Sterling Council 1 supported by the Executive Office of the Governor 2, is one of three evaluation tools for organizations in the state. This assessment allows organizations to prioritize improvement objectives and identifies successful practices present within the organization. Applicants for the Sterling Award must implement the Sterling Criteria 3 to compete for the state’s most prestigious award for performance excellence 4.

Organizations submit a 50-page application that is scored against the seven categories of the Sterling Criteria:

1) Leadership

2) Strategic Planning

3) Customer Focus

4) Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management

5) Workforce Focus

6) Process Management

7) Results

When an organization submits a Governor’s Sterling Award application, the Sterling Office assembles a team of six to eight Examiners 5. These Examiners complete an independent review of the application. They then meet for two days to come to consensus on their findings of strengths and opportunities for improvement, and to prepare for the substantial five to six day site-visit.

On site, the team interviews employees at all levels of the organization, reviews additional documents and results to verify and clarify the original application in its relationship to the Sterling Criteria for Organizational Performance Excellence.

The team then prepares a detailed written feedback report highlighting key strengths and opportunities for improvement for future organizational planning.

The Sterling Panel of Judges selects organizations that have successfully implemented the Sterling Criteria across the organization, and these recipients are recognized at the annual Governor’s Sterling Award Banquet 6.

Since its inception, the Sterling Council has acknowledged 57 organizations 7 as Governor’s Sterling Award recipients and “Role Models for Organizational Performance Excellence.”8

The Governor’s Sterling Award application is most suitable for organizations that:

• Do long and short-term strategic planning

• Have a refined set of measures and targets

• Use comparative and benchmark data to set targets

• Have identified, documented, and measured the effectiveness of key customer, product, service, business, and support processes

• Have clearly defined comprehensive human resource plans

• Have positive results over time (trends) in many to most key business areas

• Utilize a standardized process to review in-process and end-of-line results, take corrective action, and make improvements

Creator of the Governor's Sterling Award is Lawton Chiles

Other sites that are related to the Governor's Sterling Award include the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award, and the current Florida Governor Charlie Crist