Baldrige FAQs: The Baldrige Criteria

What are the Baldrige Criteria?

The Baldrige Criteria define a management model focused on performance excellence. By answering more than 250 Criteria questions, organizations get a comprehensive snapshot of their management systems that they can use to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. There are three versions of the Baldrige Criteria, one for businesses and nonprofits, one for healthcare, and one for education. You can view the 2011-2012 Criteria online here.

Who develops the Criteria?

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program is responsible for the Baldrige Criteria, which are revised and published every two years. The Baldrige Program solicits input from Award applicants, members of the Board of Examiners, and others to update the Criteria.

What do the Criteria address?

The Baldrige Criteria are organized into an Organizational Profile and seven categories: Leadership; Strategic Planning; Customer Focus; Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management; Workforce Focus; Operations Focus; and Results. Each category is divided into Items, and each Item is further divided into Areas to Address that pose the questions to be answered.

For example, the Leadership category has two Items: Senior Leadership and Governance and Social Responsibility. The Senior Leadership Item has two Areas to Address: Vision, Values, and Mission and Communication and Organizational Performance. Each Area groups…

Responding to Critics

In an earlier article, I wrote about the question I’ve gotten more than once about Baldrige Award recipients that have failed. Specifically, I focused on the Wallace Company, which won the Award in 1990 and filed for bankruptcy early in 1992. You can read how I respond to that question here.

It turns out that Jim Collins, author of the recently released How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, got the same question when a few companies he spotlighted in his Good to Great bestseller struggled and one—Circuit City—went out of business.

In his new book, Collins wrote, “Just because a company falls doesn’t invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.” In a New York Times article, Collins notes that “the merits of analyzing the reasons for a company’s long winning streak…are just as valid even if the company…can’t maintain the winning formula. If people eat right and exercise, then stop doing so, it doesn’t make those habits any less valid.”

It would be nice to think that organizations that achieve high levels of performance excellence can sustain that indefinitely. They cannot, any more than the people who run an organization…