Key excellence indicators are based on 12 years of Baldrige experience. They are the features exhibited by organisations which score highly in this criteria
- Quantitative orientation
- Focus on actionable data
- Multiple measures
- Inter-linked measures - both internal and external
- Wide deployment and accessibility
- Strong analysis capability
- Benchmark best-in-class; within and outside of the industry
Source - NIST
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| 4.1 | Measurement of organisational performance (40 points) |
| Describe how your organisation provides effective performance measurement systems for understanding, aligning, and improving performance at all levels and in all parts of your organisation. |
Key words and phrases for this item
| 4.1a | Measurement of organisational performance |
| 4.1a(1) | How do you address the major components of an effective performance measurement system, including the following key factors? - selection of measures/indicators, and extent and effectiveness of their use in daily operations - selection and integration of measures/indicators and completeness of data to track your overall organisational performance - selection, and extent and effectiveness of use of key comparative data and information - data and information reliability - a cost/financial understanding of improvement options - correlations/projections of data to support planning. |
This area is looking first for an explanation of how you choose the measures or indicators that you use and how well your chosen measures represent what happens in your organisation (and how well they reflect your strategic drivers - the key business drivers nominated in category 2 should show up here as measures of performance)
See the Metrics exhibit for an extended discussion of best-processes for gathering and using organisational metrics
A key concept in this area is balance ¾ if your organisation-wide strategies show that non-financial and financial performance are equally important, you should collect information that tracks and signals progress in both.
If you use a balanced scorecard approach (see the Balanced scorecards exhibit and IBM Rochester and Raytheon in the case studies collection) this is where you explain why you've selected the measures in each quadrant of the scorecard.
Balanced scorecard approaches look forward as well as backwards. Your data collection methods should consider the past, the present and the future.
Many organisations choose to focus on a small collection of key measures; under headings like economic value-added, people value-added, and customer value-added, for example..
Examples
 |  | IBM Rochester's balanced scorecard - attributes, criteria and principles |
| | CISCO Systems, keeping data up-to-date |
| 4.1a(2) | How do you keep your performance measurement system current with business needs and directions? |
- See the exhibit Keeping current with business needs and directions
- Boeing A&TP report that their data and information, including their deployment and use, are evaluated, improved, and kept current with changing business needs through several means: integrated planning process; senior executive review; program risk assessments; their process-based management (PBM) system; and annual reviews of information technology.
| 4.2 | Analysis of Organisational Performance (45 points) |
| Describe how your organisation analyzes performance data and information to assess and understand overall organisational performance. |
Key words and phrases for this item are:
| 4.2a | Analysis of Organisational Performance |
| 4.2a(1) | How do you perform analyses to support your senior executives' organisational performance review and your organisational planning? How do you ensure that the analyses address the overall health of your organisation, including your key business results and strategic objectives? |
“Analysis includes trends, projections, comparisons, and cause-effect correlations intended to support performance reviews and the settings of priorities for resource use; it draws on all types of data: customer-related, financial, market, operational and competitive.”
- This requirement seeks a high-level approach – based on the organisational performance reviews of senior executives, looking at the overall health of your organisation – and is usefully regarded as the helicopter overview. Get up above what your organisation does and summarise the overarching processes at work.
- Start by showing how you use information to run your organisation
- Look at IBM Rochester's work on the links between customer satisfaction and revenue as best practice example of high level analysis driving strategic planning.
- See Writing an application for examples of analytical models.
- Finish by showing that the analyses you do are linked to your key business drivers, and come straight from your strategic planning process (“… senior executives' organisational performance review and … organisational planning)
- each of the goals in category 2 should have a matching data set and a process for reporting it explained here.
Example
| | Information and analysis at Solar Turbines |
| 4.2a(2) | How do you ensure that the results of organisational-level analysis are linked to work group and/or functional-level operations to enable effective support for decision making? |
- This area is looking for evidence that analyses of your data make a difference; where your products are made, on the assembly line or factory floor; or where your services are delivered, in the offices where your consultants provide advice …. In other words, how do you ensure that analysis of the information you gather makes a difference to the way your organisation functions?
Example
| | Boeing A&TP's PMS's categories and criteria |
| 4.2a(3) | How does analysis support daily operations throughout your organisation? Include how this analysis ensures that measures align with action plans? |
- The Cisco example above shows how analysis supports daily operations in that firm. Is there a comparable example in your organisation?
- This is where you show how you ensure that the things you measure support the action plans you explained in criteria 2.