Key Takeaways:
- Strategic relevance: The pursuit of excellence strengthens the resilience of every type of organization, from craft businesses to industrial groups.
- Resilience & speed: Excellent organizations are characterized by robustness in dealing with the unexpected and high decision-making speed.
- Positive attitude: Instead of fear of the future, the actions of excellent players are characterized by optimism, curiosity and a conscious “desire for the future”.
- New framework: The evaluation for the Austrian Quality Award is now based on the future-oriented “Excellence Framework Europe” (EFE).
- Holistic approach: Excellence consolidates proven management principles to make complexity manageable and ensure future viability
Excellence – A look back and ahead
In focus: Austria as part of Europe
On June 4, 2025, the State Prize for Corporate Quality was awarded for the 30th time. Our Managing Director Franz Peter Walder has been involved from the very beginning, was a founding member of the non-profit AFQM (Austrian Foundation for Quality Management) and is on the board of Quality Austria, which organizes the State Prize together with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Energy and Tourism.
Why is the ambition to become excellent meaningful and important for every organization right now? Why does excellence strengthen the small craft business as well as the energy supplier or the administrative institution, the large industrial company or the non-profit social or healthcare institution?
Several skills and characteristics make up excellence in organizations:
- For example, we need robustness and resilience when dealing with the unexpected, with challenges and with the required speed of decision-making and action.
- Motivated by optimism and a positive view of human nature, it is more enjoyable to realize goals with consistency, perseverance and consistency.
- Robust people move and shape organizations, follow directions consistently and react quickly and flexibly to changing conditions.
We shape our own future
Unfortunately, the current media reality predominantly conveys dramatic events. Good events are hardly ever reported – the media always act according to the principle: “Bad news is good news for the media business”. We should not lose heart over this – consciously and unconsciously, we are constantly deciding how we want to deal with what is happening: with fear or with curiosity. Fear of the future or worries about future generations reduce our creativity and energy.
The excellent approach: “A desire for the future”!
Let us remember previous generations who, after war-related destruction, repeatedly looked to the future with hope and achieved incredible things and created something valuable. In comparison, our current challenges are easily manageable. Excellent organizations are characterized by confidence, and this is how they succeed in mastering complexity.
Future viability with the Excellence Framework Europe EFE
For the thirtieth organization of the state
The evaluation was based on the Excellence Framework Europe for the first time.
Franz Peter Walder, co-author of this open-model, holistic and free framework, summarizes: “All well-founded management approaches have similar principles and approaches in common. Success research shows that excellent organizations use comparable levers. The future-oriented framework consolidates this content.”
Dr. Franz Peter Walder ist Geschäftsführer und CEO der CONENGA Group und verantwortet seit 2020 den Aufbau, die strategische Ausrichtung und die Entwicklung des Unternehmens. Sein Fokus liegt auf der Entwicklung und Implementierung innovativer Engineering- und Optimierungslösungen für industrielle Energieanlagen, mit besonderem Schwerpunkt auf Effizienzsteigerung, Digitalisierung und nachhaltigen Technologien.
Mit über 30 Jahren Erfahrung in der Gründung, Führung und Entwicklung technologieorientierter Unternehmen verfügt Dr. Walder über umfassende Expertise an der Schnittstelle von Engineering, IT, Qualitätsmanagement und industrieller Prozessoptimierung. Seit 1993 gründete und entwickelte er mehrere erfolgreiche Unternehmen in den Bereichen Consulting, Informationstechnologie und Managementsysteme.
Darüber hinaus engagiert er sich seit vielen Jahren in führenden Funktionen im Qualitätsmanagement, unter anderem als geschäftsführender Vorstand der Austrian Foundation for Quality Management sowie als Vorstandsmitglied der Österreichischen Vereinigung für Qualitätssicherung und Mitglied im Board der Quality Austria Gruppe.
Bei CONENGA treibt Dr. Walder insbesondere die Entwicklung und Anwendung datenbasierter und modellgestützter Engineering-Methoden voran, um die Effizienz, Stabilität und Nachhaltigkeit industrieller Anlagen zu verbessern.
Expertise:
- Strategische Entwicklung von Engineering- und Technologieunternehmen
- Qualitätsmanagement, Excellence und Organisationsentwicklung
- Digitale Transformation
- Optimierung industrieller Energieanlagen und Prozesse, innovative, nachhaltige Energiesysteme
Fokusbereiche bei CONENGA:
- Gestaltung und Umsetzung von Optimierungsprojekten und Anlagen(um)bauprojekten
- Entwicklung von Geschäftsmodellen für nachhaltige Lösungen zu CCS – Carbon Capture and Storage
- Entwicklung nachhaltiger Engineering-Lösungen Strategische Entwicklung technologischer Innovationen