Step #1: Define Your Requirements

First choice: internal assessment, state/local award application, or Baldrige Award application? Here are the major pros and cons:

	Pros	Cons
Internal Assessment	· No external deadline · No application fees · No page limits · No pressure	· No external deadline—tendency for deadline to “slide” · Cost of external evaluators · No award recognition
State/Local Award Application (typical pros and cons for most programs)	· External evaluation · Multiple award levels · More personal service, i.e., in-person feedback, site visits	· Application fee · Deadline · Local, as opposed to national, recognition
Baldrige Award Application	· Highest-quality external evaluation · National recognition · Discipline of deadline	· Application fee · Deadline · No recognition until your management system is excellent

Once you’ve chosen a course, you have another decision to make: internal production and/or external support? Again, the major pros and cons:

	Pros	Cons
Internal Baldrige Team	· Involves people in learning Baldrige · Costs least of all options	· Requires people’s time · Requires Baldrige training · Tends to take longer to produce · Misses outside perspective
External Baldrige Support	· Requires less internal time · Process completed quickest · Provides external perspective · High-quality assessment and evaluation	· Costs more · Less internal involvement means less learning about Baldrige
Internal/External Combo	· Requires less internal time than going it alone · Provides expert Baldrige support and perspective · Typically produces a higher-quality assessment than internal only	· Costs more than going it alone · Still requires Baldrige training · Tends to take longer to produce than external expert’s assessment

Name a Baldrige “owner.” That might be the CEO or a VP, but it should be a senior executive. Add “Completion of a Baldrige Assessment” to his/her annual performance review just to make sure it doesn’t slide.

Set milestones for the next nine steps.

Step #2: Establish Your Process

You need to figure out is who is doing what, when, and for how long. The next eight steps are the “what.” Attach people and dates to each step and you’ve got a process. Draw it with boxes and arrows and you’ve got a Baldrige-worthy process map.

If you are applying for something, check the requirements for submission. For example, here are the key dates for a Baldrige application submission in 2010: Eligibility Certification Package with a nomination for the Board of Examiners on or before March 1 (packages without a nomination on or before April 6), with the award application on a CD due on or before May 6 or the award application on paper due on or before May 20. Miss a date and it’s “wait ‘til next year.”

Step #3: Allocate Resources

You have people assigned to this process to support, research, write, and/or edit. If you expect them to do this with no relief from their regular jobs, you’re pushing your Baldrige assessment down the priority pole. If you’re doing this with little outside support, allocate resources for Baldrige training so your people know what the Baldrige Criteria are asking and how they should go about answering.

Here’s a guide for allocating your human resources:

Support	· Take Baldrige training · Identify subject matter experts (SMEs) · Arrange interviews	· 4-7 hours per person · 2 hours per Category · 1 hour per Category
Research	· Interview subject matter experts · Collect data	· 1-2 hours per SME · 80-100 hours for Category 7
Write	· Write responses	· 30-40 hours per Category
Edit	· Review and edit responses	· 15 hours per Category/per person/ per draft

If you are getting outside help, ask for quotes to determine how much it will cost. Tasks you may want help with—and that you will want to get a quote for—include training, research, writing, editing, and evaluating.

If this is an internal assessment and you’re not applying for anything, you will need to hire one or more experienced Baldrige examiners to evaluate your assessment and provide feedback. Make sure you budget for this.

Step #4: Plan the Research

The quality of your assessment depends on the quality of your responses to the Baldrige questions, and the quality of those responses depends on the quality of your research. Here’s how to produce quality:

1. Understand what each Criteria question is asking.
2. Determine who in your organization is best qualified to answer each question.
3. Organize a table that shows who is answering what.
4. Figure out who will interview these subject matter experts.
5. Set up the interviews.

Start with an hour for each interview unless the expert is only answering one or two questions, in which case a half-hour should suffice, or the expert is covering an entire Item, in which case two hours probably won’t be enough.

Step #5: Do the Research

The interviewer’s job is to answer each question he or she is assigned as completely and accurately as possible. In most cases, the interviewer is looking for how your organization does what the Criteria are requesting. What’s your process? Who does what, when? What are the steps? Don’t end the interview until you know—unless you arrange a follow-up interview.

And don’t forget about results. How do you know the process is working? What key measures do you review? What are the results for those measures? Ask for data for at least three years, if possible. Ask if there’s a benchmark, competitive or otherwise. Find out what the goal is for the current year. All of this will come in handy to those who have to write Category 7.

Step #6: Write Your Responses

Here’s a good tip: Read the relevant section of a Baldrige Award recipient’s application before you start writing. Try to get a sense for how responses are structured. Notice how they answered every question as completely as possible within the page constraints under which they worked. Notice how they frequently linked to other parts of the application to show alignment and the deployment of key approaches.

Here’s another good tip: Don’t worry about how long your response is. It can always be condensed.

Category 7 is a strange beast. Most of your response here should be graphs that show trends, benchmarks, and goals for the key measures you talked about in Categories 1 to 6. Again, check out the application of a Baldrige Award recipient to see how it’s done.

Step #7: Refine the Assessment

First, send your initial write-ups to the subject matter experts who were interviewed and ask them to review and provide feedback. Send the entire assessment to the executive team to review. Circulate it among your internal Baldrige team for review.

Incorporate any changes into a second draft. At this point, you may want to assign one or two people to edit your rough draft, which probably reads like something written by a committee. You’re describing a single management system. One writer can make it look like one system.

Run the next draft past senior leaders one last time, fix what needs to be fixed, and the assessment is done!

Step #8: Evaluate the Assessment

You can’t do this yourself unless you have trained Baldrige examiners working for you—and even then you’re probably better off hiring outside help. A fresh, unbiased perspective can bring credibility and new insights to an analysis of your management system.

One or two evaluators should be enough. The evaluators should have experience doing this kind of thing, although they don’t need to know anything about your industry or business. I can recommend highly-qualified people if you’re having trouble.

Step #9: Act on the Evaluation

This is what you’ve been waiting for. The assessment and evaluation should have produced a relatively long list of opportunities for improvement (OFIs). Senior leaders need to prioritize those OFIs, develop action plans, and assign owners and teams to tackle them.

For some organizations, the assessment and evaluation are inputs into their strategic planning process, during which objectives and action plans are identified to address the major OFIs.

Step #10: Plan Your Next Assessment

Integrating the Baldrige model is not a one-year affair. If you truly want to become a Baldrige organization, you must reassess, reevaluate your new list of OFIs, improve, reassess, etc., ad infinitum.

The good news is that the first assessment is the hardest. The next one will have a lot of the spade work done: You can read what you wrote and decide if it’s still accurate, needs to be updated, or needs to be totally redone. But at least you’re not starting from scratch.

Put your next Baldrige assessment on the calendar. Pull together your Baldrige team and ask them what worked this cycle, what didn’t, and how the process can be improved. Better yet, discuss it over a celebratory dinner. They deserve the recognition for a hard job well done.

Posted by Steve George  |  Application Process