The Baldrige Criteria, a 10,000-foot view
It’s been my experience that applicants tend to overcomplicate their responses in applying for a Baldrige-based award. This can be discouraging and is harder to communicate to staff, customers, boards, etc.
P – Org Profile. To me, this is the most important thing to get right. Ideally – it should have SIMPLE and STRAIGHTFORWARD answers. If you are doing one for your organization, it should fit cleanly on the slides of a 10 page PowerPoint that would resonate in New Employee Orientation equally well for the new Janitor as for the new CEO.
P1 – Who am I, What Business am I in. Practical short lists! What goods/services do we sell. What groups of customers to we sell them to. Who do we file regulatory reports to? Who are our employees? What equipment do we need to do our jobs? Who do we report to?
P2 – What environment and I operating in (market, competition, advantages, challenges)
You CAN’T effectively answer P2 until you NAIL P1.
1 – Leadership
Leaders don’t command – they influence. People follow their leaders because of what they see their leaders doing. So Category 1, to some extent, is about how people SEE, perceive the Senior Leaders. It’s about those INDIVIDUALs at the top of the organizations’ ladder.– what the leaders (individuals) look like from inside the organization
1.1 – What the leaders (individuals) look like from inside the organization.
1.2 – what the leaders (individuals) look like from outside the organization (Board of directors, regulators, public at large).
2 – Strategic Planning
Remember Strategic Plans are about how to Change or Evolve the business. Operational Plans are about how to run it.- How to make the plan
2.1 – How to make the plan
2.2 – How to execute the plan
3– Customers
This is ANYBODY that gives you money in exchange for a good or service – they can usually be divided into meaningful groups.
3.1 – How do you know (and keep up with) what the Customers want?
3.2 – How do you make them want to buy it from you.
4 – Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
If you do it, you should count it, measure it, compare it. We measure volume (numbers), time, dollars, and quality. And relate all of these measures to each other.
4.1 – Are you capturing and using data to make decisions
4.2 – Are you sharing that data so others (in and out of the organization) can use it to make decisions
5-Workforce
Anybody involved in helping you get the good or service to the customer – paid or not.
5.1 – Are you hiring the right people into the right positions to get the job done?
5.2 – How do you make them want to work for you?
6 – Operations
What happens day in and day out to make a good or service to deliver to a customer
6.1 – How do you lay our the steps needed to produce what the customers want?
6.2 – How do you actively manage performing those steps?
7 – Results
is pretty self-explanatory if you’ve nailed 1 – 6 and the Org Profile.
Baldrige breaks out the criteria as Basic, Overall, and Multiple Requirements. Sometimes looking at an application (or your organization) through an UBER-Basic lens helps to focus efforts where they can do the most good.
Sometimes looking at the criteria as simply as above helps to make linkages between them and illustrates where integration is optimal
