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Blogrige
The Official Baldrige Blog
An emerald symbolizes a 20th anniversary. The gem is said to represent unity, prosperity, authority, growth, and well-being—characteristics that could also represent the Alliance for Performance Excellence, a key partner of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) and the value that this collaborative network of state and regional, Baldrige-based award programs bring to U.S. organizations.
By public law, BPEP was tasked with improving the quality, performance, and long-term success of businesses and other organizations through recognizing national role models and fostering the adoption of proven best practices. One of the ways the program does this is by producing and sharing the Baldrige Excellence Framework®, the Baldrige Award Criteria, and other products and services, but this is only part of the story.
For 20 years, the nonprofit Alliance for Performance Excellence has been a key BPEP partner that vastly expands the reach of performance excellence initiatives across the U.S. economy. The Alliance member programs work within states and regions with organizations interested in starting with Baldrige materials and achieving performance improvement. The nonprofit network collaborates with the Baldrige Program and is often the pathway to national recognition for high-performing organizations seeking to improve, innovate, and thrive as Baldrige Award recipients.
Twenty Years of Collaboration
I once had the great pleasure of interviewing Curt Reimann, the first director of BPEP, for an article entitled “How the Baldrige Program Began.” In the late 1980s, his team set out to create the Baldrige Award Criteria—a collection of best practices that would revolutionize industrial quality and excellence across the United States.
He told me BPEP attracted a lot of interest from states looking to stand up their own Baldrige-based awards that celebrate excellence. Many states already had a U.S. Senate Productivity Award given to companies demonstrating exemplary quality and productivity improvement efforts. In 2005, with the encouragement of the National Governors’ Association, state award programs merged to create the Baldrige-based Alliance for Performance Excellence as a way to better coordinate resources and initiatives.
Reimann told me, “We have always regarded the state programs as our partners in a larger campaign. . . . Together, our reach is much greater than it would have been without them.”
“State and local Baldrige‐based programs play a key role in facilitating performance excellence in the U.S.,” said Brian Lassiter, chair of the Alliance for Performance Excellence and president of the Performance Excellence Network, the Alliance program that represents Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. “Today, state and local programs create somewhat of a ‘feeder system’ for the national award, preparing both Baldrige Award applicant organizations and volunteer examiners to serve in the national program. But state programs also serve the broader role of educating, coaching, and facilitating continuous improvement with literally thousands of organizations across the country. . . . [Alliance programs] play a vital role . . . in helping organizations start, accelerate, and sustain a journey towards excellence.”
Engage with Your Alliance Program
Organizations interested in the Baldrige framework but new to performance improvement often find that the best starting point is through an Alliance program.
Using the Baldrige Excellence Framework® for a systems approach to performance improvement, Alliance programs offer detailed organization-wide assessments and feedback reports. Most Alliance programs also offer a tiered approach (e.g., offering bronze, silver, and gold awards) to assessments to match applicant organizations’ maturity levels.
The Alliance produces a Baldrige best-practice-sharing conference each fall, and member programs often host their own conferences and sharing events. There are also lecture series, professional development series, training, and recognition programs offered through Alliance programs.
Organizations can meet Alliance members at their exhibit booth at the 36th Baldrige Quest for Excellence Conference this spring.
The Value of the Alliance
Alliance programs welcome all types of organizations, from all sectors of the U.S. economy. Some examples follow.
In Louisiana, Ron Schulingkamp, instructor of management and business analytics at Loyola University New Orleans, said the Alliance has provided learning opportunities, networking, best practices, and benchmarking across multiple industries. For example, the Alliance provided comparison data for the management and operations contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy Strategic Petroleum Reserve, DM Petroleum Operations Company (DM), which went on to receive the Baldrige Award.
He said that over the last 20 years, Alliance programs have encouraged and facilitated learning among Baldrige Award winners across the United States. For example, the Jefferson Parish (LA) government benchmarked its results with those of the Baldrige Award-winning City of Irving, TX, and thus improved the effectiveness and efficiency of its animal shelter, as well as its initiatives related to community action, community development, code enforcement, public works, and a jobs center.
“One thing I’ve enjoyed in my role is watching organizations receive an Alliance top award, and then go on to receive the Baldrige Award,” said Margot Hoffman, president/CEO of The Partnership for Excellence’s (TPE), the Alliance program that serves the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and West Virginia. “Baldrige Award recipients share their best practices with organizations across the country at Alliance conferences/training and at [BPEP’s] Quest for Excellence Conference.”
She added, “Alliance programs strengthen the economies of our small towns and states. An organization from Jasper, IN [Baldrige Award recipient Memorial Hospital and Health Care Center], for example, can start its performance excellence journey with its state/regional Alliance program, improve and innovate, and end up serving as a role model and benchmark for other organizations across our nation.”
According to Hoffman, “Collaboration and resource sharing among Alliance members has been the biggest value to our program. For example, we’ve partnered with six other programs to offer monthly webinars to educate our members and create awareness of the Baldrige framework and how to apply it. Alliance members have collaborated to develop examiner training materials and tools and templates to facilitate the assessment process. And the Alliance’s standards for the judging process and criteria for top-tier award recipients helps calibrate our award process.”
What Do Alliance Program Customers Say?
In Stillman Valley, IL, Meridian Community Unit School District (CUSD) 223 is celebrating its Alliance Gold Achievement of Excellence award. Superintendent P.J. Caposey, said, “The Baldrige Excellence Framework has been a key element in all improvement efforts at Meridian CUSD 223 for nearly a decade.” John Smith, president of the Meridian Board of Education, added, "Our administrators emphasized that Baldrige is about continuous improvement and doing things the right way. While the improvement journey has been great to watch, it is outstanding to see the district recognized for the success we are currently enjoying."
A health system CEO who has received TPE’s top-level Governor’s Award for Excellence, said, “Our organization has been on a continuous journey, applying the Baldrige framework to our operations for many years. Our physicians, employees, and partners strive to advance excellence and quality in the delivery of patient-centered care every day. We value their dedication, and the recognition validates our team’s efforts, the quality of our work, and our unwavering commitment to excellence in all we do.”
Another TPE health system CEO whose organization has received TPE’s Governor’s Award for Excellence, added, “Even in the midst of battling the pandemic, we made an intentional decision to re-energize our team around our Baldrige journey. We know that the work we put into it will make us an even stronger organization that can weather unprecedented challenges.”
State-by-state data on Alliance top-tier award winners can be viewed on BPEP’s website.
To connect and learn more about your Baldrige-based state, regional, or sector program, visit the Alliance for Performance Excellence website.
In addition, you can visit the Alliance for Performance Excellence booth at the 36th Quest for Excellence Conference. Alliance representatives will also speak at the conference.
Join us at the Quest for Excellence® 2025!
The Quest for Excellence® Conference
Sunday, March 30–Wednesday, April 2, 2025 | #BaldrigeQuest
The conference will feature new and exciting opportunities to learn role-model best practices from nationally recognized thought leaders, Baldrige Award recipients, and representatives from other high-performing organizations. Conference highlights include engaging and thought-provoking keynote speakers, plenary sessions featuring the 2024 Baldrige Award Recipients, and concurrent sessions focusing on relevant topics of interest, such as leadership and social responsibility, operational continuity and resilience, workforce issues, and customers and strategy.
