Grande to serve on Board of Overseers for Baldrige Award

Founder of Accordence, Grande Lum, has been asked to serve on the prestigious Board of Overseers for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

From Wikipedia, we know that the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is an annual award that recognizes U.S. organizations in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors for performance excellence. The Baldrige Award is the only formal recognition of the performance excellence of U.S. organizations given by the President of the United States. It is administered by the Baldrige National Quality Program, which is based at and managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The Baldrige National Quality Program and the associated Award were established by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 (Public Law 100–107). The Program and Award were named for Malcolm Baldrige, who served as United States Secretary of Commerce during the Reagan administration, from 1981 until Baldrige’s 1987 death in a rodeo accident.

The Award promotes awareness of performance excellence as an increasingly important element in competitiveness and information sharing of successful performance strategies and the benefits derived from using these strategies. To receive a Baldrige Award, an organization must have a role-model organizational management system that ensures continuous improvement in the delivery of products and/or services, demonstrates efficient and effective operations, and provides a way of engaging and responding to customers and other stakeholders. The Award is not given for specific products or services. Up to 18 Awards may be given annually across six eligibility categories—manufacturing, service, small business, education, health care, and nonprofit. As of 2009, 84 organizations had received the Award.

Criteria for Performance Excellence

The seven categories of the Criteria are:

  • Leadership

  • Strategic Planning

  • Customer Focus

  • Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management

  • Workforce Focus

  • Process Management

  • Results

The main uses of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence are education and organizational self-assessment and self-improvement. The Criteria are also the basis for giving Baldrige Awards and giving feedback to Baldrige Award applicants. In addition, the Criteria have the following three roles in strengthening U.S. competitiveness:

  • To help improve organizational performance practices, capabilities, and results

  • To facilitate communication and sharing of information on best practices among U.S. organizations of all types

  • To serve as a working tool for understanding and managing performance and for guiding planning and opportunities for learning.

The Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence provide organizations with an integrated approach to organizational performance management that results in:

  • delivery of ever-improving value to customers and stakeholders, contributing to organizational sustainability

  • improvement of overall organizational effectiveness and capabilities

  • organizational and personal learning.


Program Impacts

    * According to Building on Baldrige: American Quality for the 21st Century by the private Council on Competitiveness, “More than any other program, the Baldrige Quality Award is responsible for making quality a national priority and disseminating best practices across the United States.”

    * An October 2001 study of the economic impact of the Baldrige National Quality Program, prepared for NIST by Albert N. Link and John T. Scott, conservatively estimated the net private benefits associated with the Program to the economy as a whole at $24.65 billion. When compared to the social costs of the Program of $119 million, BNQP’s social benefit-to-cost ratio is 207-to-1.

    * Leadership Excellence magazine in 2007 placed the Baldrige Program in the top ten best government/military leadership programs in the United States based on seven criteria: vision/mission, involvement/participation, accountability/measurement, content/curriculum, presenters/presentations, take-home value/results for customers, and outreach of the programs and products.

    * Since the Program’s inception in 1987, more than 2 million copies of the business/nonprofit, education, and health care versions of the Criteria for Performance Excellence booklets have been distributed to individuals and organizations in the United States and abroad. In 2008, more than 1.75 million copies of the Criteria were accessed or downloaded from the Baldrige Web site.