From Baldrige to the Bottom Line

An Excerpt from Chapter 2

An assessment has three major components: the criteria, the people who perform the work, and the process that they use. In order to conduct a great assessment, you need to make good decisions about each of these.

People often believe that once they've decided to conduct a "Baldrige assessment" they have pretty much defined what's to be done. They feel that there's little else to decide. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When you conduct an assessment within your own organization, you will often choose to use criteria that are borrowed from an awards program, but the other aspects of your approach may look significantly different from the awards process-and for good reasons.

There is also a widely held belief that doing everything "exactly the way that the award examiners do it" is in some way desirable (to ensure rigor) or virtuous (to keep the process "pure"). This belief is understandable: but it is a misconception. In fact it is not a good idea to blindly emulate all the methods used by awards programs without considering carefully whether these will serve your needs.

You therefore have the freedom – indeed the obligation – to consider the range of possibilities that exist and to devise an assessment process that is suited to the needs of your organization. However, you need to know what you are about in order to do this successfully. This chapter aims to give you this knowledge.

From Baldrige to the Bottom Line

An Excerpt from Chapter 2

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