One of the great things about doing a Baldrige assessment is the freedom it gives you to ask stupid questions, the kinds of questions nobody would normally ask because their coworkers would snicker. Simple questions about things everybody’s supposed to know.

Here’s a good Criteria question: How do you identify customer groups and market segments?

Here’s another: How do you determine customer dissatisfaction?

Or: How do you acquire new customers?

In my experience, these “stupid” questions are the most important questions you will answer because nobody’s given them much thought for a long time and they are fundamental to your success. Answering them forces you to describe your processes, an exercise that often reveals serious gaps and great opportunities.

One of the drawbacks of doing an assessment without outside help is the tendency to trot out the “common knowledge” answers to these simple questions without thinking about them. After all, your people are expected to know these things. As an external consultant, I had the freedom to ask the “stupid” questions because I wasn’t expected to know anything. I also had the responsibility to push hard for the processes that answered them, which often produced “Aha!” moments when no process could be found or holes in the existing process were exposed.

You can gain the same insights on your own by assigning someone who is not in a customer-facing department to find the answers to the customer questions. For example, put the head of Human Resources in charge of the Customer Focus Category, and then put the head of Marketing in charge of the Workforce Focus Category. They’ll not only learn more about how your organization works, but they’ll also feel freer to ask the “stupid” questions that can lead to dramatic improvements.

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