Introduction
2012 was an incredibly busy year for our Business Excellence Solutions collaboration! As an entity, we have grown to the point where we have had to revisit our structure to ensure that we continue seamless support of our diverse and incredibly interesting client-base. Business Excellence Solutions has relied on an informal business model that depends on the individual contributions of its collaborators. Our model is elegant in its simplicity, however that simplicity also requires lean administrative support. Because so many new business opportunities surfaced this year, our plan to actively maintain our blog and to provide more robust client outreach and continuing support were, indeed, strained.

New Activities
This year our core team of consultants was truly able to collaborate and to draw on our diverse backgrounds to provide conflict resolution and organizational assessment and development services in response to extremely complex situations. We were also able to launch several exciting new programs for new clients. We continued our mediation services to a wide range of agencies, corporations, and court systems. We continued our professional support of the new ombudsman program for the Greater Albuquerque Association of Realtors, and also had the opportunity to launch an exciting new international, web-based ombudsman program for our new client – The International Foundation for Online Responsibility. This is an exciting new program for us because our work for this program is international and, in addition to providing traditional organizational ombudsman services, it also includes significant systems review and design support to help ensure that the worldwide community is protected from internet abuses such as child abuse imagery, cyber-squatting, and trademark infringement. This activity is truly cutting-edge in a world where internet-based communication and marketing are becoming dominant.

A part of our work to support the International Foundation for Online Responsibility also involved program design to best assure compliance with applicable standards for both operating an ombudsman program and for designing and operating a web-based complaint resolution system for addressing concerns relating to the initiation and operation of new websites. With the extremely able assistance of one or our senior consultants, Camilla Lopez, we designed evaluation systems “from the ground up,” and now have standards, audit, and quality assurance systems in place to ensure that IFFOR can fulfill its mission.

Another exciting new activity involves working with fellow Business Excellence Solutions principal, Monique McKay, to launch an exciting new entity called the Center for Resolution Advocacy. This new organization is dedicated to continuing the work previously performed by the Master Mediator Institute. The organization will provide advanced training in the scientific basis of human interactions, communications and decision-making. The new organization (C4RA.com) will provide a more inclusive venue for its participants, in that it is not limited in its focus to mediation work alone.
Continuing Activities
This year, we continued our work with many existing clients to provide services such as:

• Providing extensive mediation services to the New Mexico District Court – both for civil tort cases and for foreclosure cases.
• Working extensively with the Bureau of Indian Education to facilitate tribal consultation meetings to hear views from the Indian Nations about challenges to providing the most effective educational services possible to Indian youth.
• Working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide mediation services for workplace disputes and organizational conflict assessment and intervention design.
• Providing executive coaching to various managers, including federal officials and executives in private organizations.
• Providing business coaching to a number of new small businesses in need of start up business planning and individual coaching.
• Working directly with several Indian Nations to help them address governance issues and resolve internal conflicts.
• Continued work with Los Alamos National Laboratory to provide community outreach facilitations in its important work to preserve the environment and to remediate past environmental issues.

All told the total work volume for this calendar year increased by about twenty percent over previous years. As a result of the significantly increased workload, as noted, we fell behind in maintaining and updating this blog. Our apologies! We are working to redistribute support for the blog function and have streamlined other internal systems so that the administrative burdens inherent to consulting on sophisticated issues with organizations that often have their own complex procurement and accounts payable requirements are minimized. Thus, we hope that you will see improved quality and regularity in our posting and our website maintenance.

We strive to consistently look forward to anticipate opportunities to add value to the American and international workplace as well as to indigenous communities. In that vein we have set goals for outreach and support for the coming year that will allow us to continue to be personally challenged and to grow individually while adding value to our clients.

All of us want to thank the absolutely wonderful people with whom we have worked this year for their professionalism, fun, and for sharing the diversity of their experiences. On behalf of the entire Business Excellence Solutions team, I want to wish everyone a blessed Holiday Season and a very Happy New Year!

BJM
December 5, 2012