Absolutely.

It doesn’t matter what you do or how big or small you are, integrating the Baldrige model will make you a better organization. I’ve worked on Baldrige with medical centers, a K-12 school, a college and a university, a Wing Command of the National Guard and an Army base, a district court, a large market research company and a small one, a pharmaceutical company, medical device manufacturers and a computer manufacturer, a transport refrigeration manufacturer, a dental products manufacturer and dental insurers, printed circuit board manufacturers and a power supply manufacturer, and a gas and electric utility. Baldrige helped all of them improve performance.

But.

These organizations wanted to improve. Your organization may not. Baldrige is definitely right for your organization if you can answer these questions “yes”:

• Do senior leaders believe change is necessary?
• Will they support transforming your management system?
• Are senior leaders (preferably the senior leader) promoting Baldrige?
• Is your organization committed to performance excellence?

If you answer “no” to any of these questions, you can still conduct a Baldrige assessment and apply for the Baldrige and state awards and act on the opportunities to improve that are identified, but change will be slow and it will be hard to sustain. In the end, senior leadership must embrace Baldrige as a systematic, long-term approach to improving performance or you’re just diverting resources to a short-term program.

As Deming and Juran stated, 85-95% of an organization’s problems are caused by the system, not by the people working the system, and management controls the system. It will only improve if leaders act to improve it.

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