Organizations new to the Baldrige Criteria often wonder what they should list as their “key work processes” (6.1b1). The Criteria booklet describes them as “your most important internal value creation processes” that “involve the majority of your organization’s workforce and produce” customer/student/stakeholder/stockholder/market value.

I always thought MEDRAD did a great job of identifying and depicting its key work processes in its Award-winning 2003 Baldrige application, as shown in the figure below. Using the MEDRAD model as a guide, you can look for your most important work processes in the following places (you can substitute the language of healthcare or education as needed):

Value Creation Processes

• Identifying, understanding, and serving customers and markets
• Designing products and services
• Producing and delivering products and services
• Marketing and selling products and services
• Billing and supporting/servicing customers
• Determining customer satisfaction and retention

Support Processes

• Developing and deploying strategies, goals, and plans
• Managing financial and physical assets
• Managing information resources and technology
• Recruiting, developing, and retaining high-performing employees
• Managing legal, regulatory, environmental, health, and safety issues
• Managing improvement, innovation, and change
• Managing external relationships (suppliers, distributors, partners, etc.)

Identifying key work processes is one of those basic exercises that the Criteria request but few organizations have taken the time to nail down.

And it’s another reason a Baldrige assessment is so valuable.

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