The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was established in 1987 to help American organizations improve their competitiveness, and contribute to the overall competitiveness of the United States. The Baldrige Award is the highest level of recognition for performance excellence that a U.S.-based organization can achieve. The Quality Texas Foundation was created in 1993, and administers the Texas Award for Performance Excellence. The Texas Award is closely patterned after the Baldrige Award, and applies to Texas-based organizations. Texas has produced more Baldrige Award recipients than any other state.

The Baldrige criteria for performance excellence provide a proven roadmap to help organizations achieve sustained, measurable performance improvement. Organizations in any industry sector can benefit, including manufacturing, service, education, healthcare or non-profit.

You do not need to formally apply for the Baldrige Award or a state award to benefit from the process. Many organizations strictly utilize the criteria to help them understand their organizations better, and make needed improvements. Following is an exhibit that shows the overall framework for the Baldrige Criteria:

The framework provides an overview of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence and illustrates how the Criteria provide a systems perspective for managing your organization to achieve performance excellence. From top to bottom, the framework has three basic elements:

• The Organizational Profile (the umbrella at the top of the figure) sets the context for the way your organization operates. The environment, key working relationships, and strategic challenges and advantages serve as an overarching guide for your organizational performance management system.
  

• The System Operations (middle of the figure) are composed of the six Baldrige Categories that define your operations and the results you achieve.   Leadership, Strategic Planning, and Customer and Market Focus represent the leadership triad.  These Categories are placed together to emphasize the importance of a leadership focus on strategy and customers.   Senior leaders set your organizational direction and seek future opportunities for your organization.  Workforce Focus, Process Management, and Results represent the results triad.  Your organization's workforce and key processes accomplish the work of the organization that yields your overall performance results. All actions point toward Results - a composite of product and service, customer and market, financial, and internal and external operational performance results, including workforce, leadership, governance, and social responsibility results.  The horizontal arrow in the center of the figure links the leadership triad to the results triad, a linkage critical to organizational success. Furthermore, the arrow indicates the central relationship between the Leadership and Results Categories.  The two-headed arrows indicate the importance of feedback in an effective performance management system.
  

• The System Foundation for the performance management system (bottom of the figure) is the Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management Category, which is critical to the effective management of your organization and to a fact-based, knowledge-driven system for improving performance and competitiveness.

Bracken and Associates offers a comprehensive menu of customized services designed to help leadership teams transform their organizations and improve performance. It does not matter where you are in your journey toward performance excellence. Whether you want to apply for an award, conduct a preliminary assessment, begin a formal initiative to transform your organizational culture and improve performance, or just learn more about the criteria, we can help.

Customized Workshops

• Introductory workshops for senior leadership teams that familiarize participants with the Baldrige performance excellence model, core values and criteria. Participants are challenged to conduct a basic organizational assessment, identify and discuss organizational strengths and opportunities for improvement, and establish actionable priorities for continuous improvement.
  

• Facilitated workshops to help the organization focus on and improve specific criteria categories, such as leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; human resources; process management; or business results.
  

• A series of customized workshops and facilitated follow-up sessions to perform deeper assessments of specific categories and items, leverage organizational strengths, address priority opportunities for improvement, optimize resources, and accelerate organizational learning and performance improvement.

Baldrige Organizational Assessments and Consulting

• Front-end consulting to assist you in determining the appropriate level of organizational assessment and consulting required to meet your unique needs. We offer three customized levels of assessment using Baldrige criteria:
  

1. Organizational Profile Development – we assist you in determining and documenting a description of your organizational environment and relationships, competitive environment, strategic challenges and performance improvement system. Leaders develop a common language and understanding of what is relevant and important to their organization, where it is headed, and how it operates. Equally important, we help you create a context for initiating a process of organizational transformation and performance improvement.

2. Basic Assessment – a team of highly-qualified consultants experienced as Baldrige and state award Examiners conducts a fundamental assessment of the seven categories of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, and provides a written feedback report with actionable comments.

3. Baldrige Assessment – a comprehensive assessment utilizing the full Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. A carefully selected team of consultants performs independent, consensus and site visit stage assessments, and develops and presents a feedback report in Baldrige format to help your organization improve, and prepare for a formal Baldrige or state award process.

• Consulting and coaching category champions and cross-functional teams who lead your internal assessment and continuous improvement effort.
  

• Consulting and facilitation to engage the entire organization in the process of organizational assessment, feedback, action planning, learning, change and performance improvement.
  

• Change management workshops for leaders and employees to help them understand, plan and effectively implement change with customers, employees, suppliers and other key stakeholders.

Organizational Survey-Feedback-Action Planning Processes

• Online, scannable, or hybrid organizational surveys to quickly determine where an organization stands in relation to the criteria for performance excellence, and identify important organizational strengths and opportunities for improvement.
  

• Independent analyses, reports, and presentations of survey results and recommendations to senior leadership, providing objective insight regarding your organization's unique strengths and most critical opportunities for improvement, and actionable priorities to move the organization forward.
  

• Customized feedback-action planning processes to focus improvement efforts, effectively and efficiently allocate organizational resources, and maximize the return on your performance improvement efforts.
  

• Pre and post surveys to measure and evaluate progress in your organizational performance improvement process.