Preparing Your Organizational Profile

Answering the questions in the Organizational Profile—the preface to the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence—will help you

• Describe what is relevant and important to your organization
• Ensure a common understanding of these factors
• Select information and collect data as you continue your self-assessment
• Identify gaps in your approaches and their deployment as a basis for performance improvement efforts

To complete the Organizational Profile, you’ll answer questions about your organization in these areas:

Organizational Description

• Organizational Environment: your product offerings; mission, vision, and values; core competencies; workforce; technologies; equipment/facilities; and regulatory/legal environment
• Organizational Relationships: your governance system, key customer groups/market segments, key product and customer-support service requirements, and key suppliers

 

Organizational Situation

• Competitive Environment: your competitive position, relative size and growth, and competitors
• Strategic Context: your key business, operational, and human resource strategic challenges and advantages
• Performance Improvement System: your approach to evaluation and learning

You may want to complete the Organizational Profile and progress gradually to more detailed levels of self-assessment and action. If you find conflicting, limited, or missing answers to some of the questions, you may want to end your first self-assessment here. These gaps can be the starting point for developing a better understanding of your organization and improving it.