Before you can write a Baldrige application, you must gather and organize the information and data you need to respond to the Baldrige Criteria questions. Your research will produce interview notes from internal subject matter experts; documentation of processes, procedures, presentations, meeting minutes, reports, and other material; and data you will use to create the graphs for the Results category. You will want to organize all of this stuff to help you with two tasks: (1) determine if you have all you need to answer every Criteria question; and, (2) respond to the questions by making it easy to find all relevant information.

The Baldrige Criteria disassemble a management system into seven categories and a profile, 20 items, 41 areas to address, and 150 or so questions. One way to organize Baldrige research is to disassemble it along the same lines. This is easier to do with interviews, during which you have likely asked specific questions about specific areas to address, and for data than it is for supporting documentation.

I’ve done research for dozens of Baldrige and state award applications and my approach is to assign pieces of each interview to the appropriate Baldrige areas to address and then to cut and paste them in the order laid out in the Criteria. If parts of an interview apply to more than one area to address, I copy and paste them more than once to wherever they are relevant.

For the documentation, I go as far down the chain as possible. If a document relates to one area to address—a complaint management process, for example, would be marked “3.2a3”—I write the area to address at the top of the document. If it’s relevant to more than one area, I try to narrow it down to the item level or, if that’s not possible, to a category. I then organize all of the documentation in category file folders numerically, with general category material first and then material for the first item, material for the areas to address in that item, material for the second item, etc.

With this system, you will have most of what you need at your fingertips when you are ready to write—most, but not all. The downside of disassembling information is that you never get everything you need where you need it. As I write a response, I frequently find myself searching for the “bigger picture”: the whole process, not just the piece I assigned to this area to address, or a better understanding of the link to other categories and items. That information is not at my fingertips and tracking it down can really slow the writing process.

You can address this problem by also organizing your Baldrige research by major processes. For example, leadership development is a major process that relates to both categories 1 and 5. I keep all documentation related to a major process in another file folder and create a master list of all major processes for easy reference while I’m writing. That means duplicating some documents because I also organize by category, item, and area to address, but I like how knowledge of an entire process improves the descriptions of its pieces.

The benefit of using both approaches is that you can write answers to specific questions with a broader understanding of how entire processes work. You can describe an aligned and integrated management system. And you’ll be organized when examiners arrive for your site visit to verify and clarify what you’ve written.

To read more about the Baldrige application process, click on these articles:

• 10 Steps to an Effective Baldrige Assessment
• Applying for the 2010 Baldrige Award
• 10 Tips for Answering Criteria Questions
• The Value of Baldrige Consultants
• 5 Baldrige Application Mistakes

(8 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)

 Loading ...