Testimonials
The Baldrige Promise
Baldrige is performance excellence. It’s a framework and a movement that is making America better by making organizations like yours even better. You may use other performance management tools to support parts of your organization’s improvement efforts. Baldrige integrates them and offers a comprehensive management approach.
Baldrige offers you
- An overall management framework
- Criteria that evolve to reflect the leading edge of validated management practice
- Focus on results in all areas important to performance
- Focus on the future—a strategic view
- Focus on organizational and personal learning and knowledge sharing
- Focus on corporate governance, ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability
- The first and only Presidential Award for performance excellence
- Expert review and feedback from trained Examiners at a low cost
Testimonials
Here's what organizational leaders from manufacturing, health care and nonprofits say:
Testimonials from Manufacturing
“I cannot think of a better way to verify the sustainability of a business model than using the [Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award] process to confirm that your founding business principles continue to be the foundation upon which you grow. ... Since 1999, Sunny Fresh Foods has experienced rapid growth: three plants have grown to five, 380 stakeholders have grown to 620, revenue has doubled, and Sunny Fresh has become a net exporter of talent to its parent company, Cargill, Inc.”
—Michael Luker, President, Cargill Kitchen Solutions (formerly Sunny Fresh Foods, Inc.), 1999 and 2005 Award recipient
“We didn’t apply the [Baldrige] concepts ... to win an award. We did it to win customers. We did it to grow. We did it to prosper.”
—Earnest Deavenport, Chairman and CEO, Eastman Chemical Company, 1993 Award recipient
“We applied for the Award, not with the idea of winning, but with the goal of receiving the evaluation of the Baldrige Examiners. That evaluation was comprehensive, professional, and insightful. It reinforced where we were strong and provided valuable information on areas where we could improve––making it perhaps the most cost-effective, value-added business consultation available anywhere in the world today.”
—Bob Barnett, Executive Vice President, Motorola Commercial, Government & Industrial Solutions Sector, 2002 Award recipient
“In 1991, when we began applying the Baldrige principles to our business, little did I realize how different my life and business would become. We achieved significant improvements in business performance, both in increased productivity and reduced cycle time, enabled by a cultural transformation to an empowered workforce. In 2000 I changed jobs, and again we applied the Baldrige principles. In three years, we saw double-digit increases in both revenue and earnings while maintaining double-digit margins, also with a cultural transformation! ... So when asked ‘Why Baldrige?’, I have to answer, ‘Why not?’ I have the personal experiences to show that it truly works!”
—E. David Spong, former Vice President and General Manager, Boeing Airlift and Tanker Programs, 1998 Award recipient, and former President, Boeing Aerospace Support, 2003 Award recipient
“Our Baldrige journey began 15 years ago, when the first Baldrige Awards were announced. Performance excellence has since become the blueprint for exceeding the expectations of our customers, shareholders, and employees. We attribute much of Medrad’s success to the Baldrige process.”
—John P. Friel, President and CEO, Medrad, Inc., 2003 Award recipient
“The Baldrige Award has stimulated continuous improvement and breakthrough performance in many organizations. The Award Criteria provide a well-tested approach to help achieve higher levels of excellence. Health care organizations could benefit from applying its rigorous Criteria in their efforts to improve quality, lower costs, and better serve patients.”
—Robert R. Waller, former president and CEO, Mayo Foundation
“The Baldrige process is a wonderful process because . . . it makes you take every aspect of a business . . . and integrate every piece. The human resources piece is integrated with the service piece.”
—G. Richard Hastings, CEO, Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, 2003 Award recipient
“One of the biggest advantages to using the Baldrige Criteria is it serves as a platform, as a responsible way to lead your organization.”
—John Heer, president, Baptist Hospital, Inc., 2003 Award recipient
“In 2001, the Institute of Medicine made an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap in the American health care system. We believe that the Baldrige Program helps provide answers to this challenge. . . . I am delighted by the growing interest of the American Hospital Association, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and hospitals and health systems throughout the country that are embracing the Baldrige Criteria as a framework to bring excellence to our industry. It makes good business sense, and more important, it’s the right thing to do for our patients. . . . “
—Frank J. Sardone, president/CEO, Bronson Methodist Hospital, 2005 Award recipient
“Baldrige . . . has offered us a way to systematically evaluate our entire organization and understand the link between the hundreds of processes that make up the health care experience. . . . We've spent considerable time making improvements based on our Baldrige feedback. We've figured out how to deploy a consistent message throughout our organization. Our HR goals are now part of our strategic plan. . . . We have developed a complaint management process that is used systemwide. And we now benchmark against the highest-performing companies, whether or not they're in health care. Best of all, we've figured out how to translate our mission imperative—that is, ‘exceptional health care services’—into specific and measurable goals.”
—Sister Mary Jean Ryan, FSM, president/CEO, SSM Health Care, 2002 Award recipient
“Today 1,700 not-for-profit hospitals—and the patients they serve—are the beneficiaries of [a vision born from the Baldrige Criteria]. . . . Together we have achieved billions of dollars in savings—savings that strengthen the ability of hospitals to provide quality care. Together we have identified best practices that reduce birth-related injuries for mothers and newborn babies. Together we have led an initiative that has been a model for ethical business practices and transparency within the health care industry. And together we have partnered with Medicare to test a new health care payment model that rewards high-quality care. . . ."
—Richard A. Norling, President/CEO, Premier Inc., 2006 Award recipient
“We felt it necessary to adopt and adapt the principles and practices of the best-run companies in America to our particular organization in an effort to focus on our customers, align our resources with their needs and expectations, [and] drive the processes that created excellent results.”
“People ask, ‘Why Baldrige?’ My answer is very simple: a Triple A bond rating on Wall Street from all three rating agencies, bringing capital projects in on time and within budget, a 96 percent business satisfaction rating, a 94 percent resident satisfaction rating, an overall quality rating of 95 percent, and an employee satisfaction rating of 97 percent … that’s why we’re involved with Baldrige.”
“A corporate management model is absolutely necessary in government. We in government live in a slew of production functions. The challenge is to harness all those resources, point them in the direction of your customers, and provide the goods and services to your community in the most responsive and responsible way.”
“We … see a number of cities around the country that are beginning to focus on the Baldrige Criteria and take a holistic approach to performance excellence…. We are forming a consortium for benchmarking purposes and comparing data…. More and more cities and local governments are joining on to look at best practices and to compare their results with other high performing cities. It’s great for government in America.”
—Michael Levinson, City Manager, City of Coral Springs, 2007 Baldrige Award recipient
“The Baldrige process has been a 15-year journey for the City of Coral Springs.… For us, it wasn’t about winning the Sterling Award, and it’s not about being a Baldrige recipient. What it was about was the continuous feedback it gave us so we could improve every year... It wasn’t just looking at leadership, or … measuring, or … results. It was looking at all of those as equally important and giving us a framework to put our plans on and our improvement efforts on.”
—Susan Grant, Director of Human Resources, City of Coral Springs, 2007 Baldrige Award recipient
“The value of the [Baldrige] process is that there is a constant eye on taking things to the next level. So the process … was a fantastic journey that made us perform better, that made us more enthusiastic, that had us connect with that many more citizens in that much more of a personal way.... So as an organization, … we share with our citizens what’s next [and ask]: What else can we do? How can we be better?”
--Mayor Scott Brook, City of Coral Springs, 2007 Baldrige Award recipient
“We were looking for a way that would help us have the best business practices of any government agency. That was our goal. We wanted to be the best in that particular area. We looked around and …we had people who said, ‘Why don’t we look at the Baldrige Award?’”
“The advantage of applying for these awards is not to win them or not to receive them. It’s to get the feedback from these experts from the outside who look at your organization in great detail and tell you what you do well and what you don’t do so well. And we concentrated on the things that we didn’t do so well to improve in those various areas.”
—Dr. Joseph A. Lannon, Director, U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), 2007 Award recipient
“We thought, ‘What are the results we need to make ourselves a better business in government terms?’ So we really didn’t look at the financial results. We looked at the increase in revenue coming into ARDEC. We broke down the customer base, we targeted customers, and we made a determined quest to go after more resources. We’ve been able to double our incoming revenues from about 2001 to 2007.”
“By studying some of the other Baldrige applications, we found that we weren’t taking credit for a lot of things we did intuitively. So we went out, we looked, we benchmarked with other Baldrige applicants, with other quality organizations, and … started fresh with our results, because we had been stuck in that government mindset, and we knew that it wasn’t getting us what we needed.”
“We couldn’t not afford to do Baldrige. We did not sit in a good light with our headquarters. The government was looking at downsizing, and [we need] lots of extra resources to just take care of the minimum. We needed the business successes and without the Baldrige framework, I thoroughly believe we would have never gotten there.”
—Mary Manser, Director of Financial Management, ARDEC, 2007 Award recipient
“I see the Baldrige process as a powerful set of mechanisms for disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action to create great organizations that produce exceptional results.”
—Jim Collins, bestselling author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don’t