How Baldrige Works

Baldrige at a Glance

Organizations everywhere are looking for ways to effectively and efficiently meet their missions and achieve their visions. Baldrige provides a framework to improve your organization's performance and get sustainable results. Whether your organization is— large or small, service or manufacturing, education or health care, government or nonprofit, has one site or worldwide locations, Baldrige can work for you. Your Organization’s Success Is Our Goal!

What Makes Baldrige Different

Baldrige helps organizations address a dynamic environment, focus on strategy-driven performance, achieve customer and workforce engagement, and improve governance and ethics, societal responsibilities, competitiveness, and long-term organizational sustainability. It offers you a comprehensive management approach that focuses on results in all areas, organizational and personal learning, and knowledge sharing.

What Is Performance Excellence?

The term “Performance Excellence” refers to an integrated approach to organizational performance management that results in

• delivery of increasing value to customers and stakeholders, contributing to organizational sustainability
• improvement of overall organizational effectiveness and capabilities
• organizational and personal learning

Baldrige Excellence Framework

The Baldrige Excellence Framework is the Baldrige Program's signature product. The Baldrige framework booklet includes the Criteria for Performance Excellence, a set of questions that represent the leading edge of validated leadership and management practice. Through the Baldrige framework and Criteria, the Baldrige Program provides global leadership in promoting performance excellence and the learning and sharing of successful performance practices, principles, and strategies.

Framework Overview

The systems approach provided by the Baldrige framework  is shown in the figure. The performance system consists of the seven categories in the center of the figure. The basis of the Criteria is a set of core values and concepts. These are embedded beliefs and behaviors found in high-performing organizations. Learn more about  Business/Nonprofit, Education, Health Care overviews.

Self-Assessing Your Organization

Learn how to do a self-assessment using the Baldrige Excellence Framework and its Criteria to help your organization achieve high performance and move toward performance excellence.

Improvement Tools

Choose the Baldrige self-assessment tools that fit your organization’s needs. Start identifying areas in your organization that need improvement.

Involving Senior Leaders in Baldrige

Convince your organization's leadership to use Baldrige.