Leadership
How senior leaders set direction, communicate, govern responsibly — and the results that follow.
Baldrige 101
What is Baldrige, in plain language?
A short introduction for leaders who keep hearing the word and want to know what it actually means for their organization or community.
Baldrige is a set of questions — not a set of rules. The Baldrige Excellence Framework asks how your organization or community leads, plans, serves the people who depend on you, measures what matters, develops its people, performs its work, and what results all of that produces.
It was created by an act of Congress in 1987 and is stewarded today by the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program. Across the country, nonprofit state and regional programs — the members of The Alliance for Performance Excellence — put it in the hands of organizations and communities through training, assessment and recognition.
The point isn't the award. The point is that answering these questions honestly, as a leadership team, tends to surface the handful of things that would most improve your organization or community — and then gives you a way to track whether you actually improved them. In short, it helps leaders identify and prioritize improvement opportunities on which to focus their precious time and resources.
PART OF THE BROADER BALDRIGE ENTERPRISE
Distinct roles, shared purpose
Baldrige Performance Excellence Program
- Federal steward of the Baldrige Award and Excellence Framework
- Provides federal oversight through NIST and the U.S. Department of Commerce
- Confers the national award and approves revisions to the Framework
Alliance for Performance Excellence
- National network of state, regional, and sector performance excellence programs
- Administers the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award process
- Evaluates applicants and submits recipient recommendations to NIST and the U.S. Department of Commerce
Baldrige Foundation
- Advances and sustains the Baldrige mission nationwide
- Supports the continued development of the Baldrige Excellence Framework
- Hosts Quest for Excellence and administers the Baldrige Fellows Program
New for 2026
Three Maturity Pathways
The 2026 Baldrige Excellence Framework® gives organizations three places to start based on their current maturity, and a structured path to the next level.
- Pathway 1
Establishing
Operational Awareness
Clarify how work is performed, what stakeholders need, which processes matter most, and what results should be measured.
- Pathway 2
Developing
Process Discipline
Build consistency, accountability, and regular use of data to guide decisions and improvement.
- Pathway 3
Maturing
System Integration
Connect leadership, strategy, customers, organizational intelligence, workforce, operations and results into a system that learns and improves.
The Framework keeps the systems perspective, core values and evaluation guidance that distinguish Baldrige, and now addresses rapid technological change, resilience, workforce capability, responsible use of AI, and data governance and security. The pathways provide a clearer, meaningful entry point for organizations at any level.
The framework
Six categories, with results built in
In the 2026 Framework, results are integrated throughout every category — connecting how you lead and manage your work with the outcomes you want to achieve.
Strategy
How you set strategic objectives, turn them into action plans, and track what they achieve.
Customers
How you listen to the people you serve, build lasting relationships, and measure their satisfaction.
Organizational Intelligence
How you govern, secure and use data — including responsible use of AI — to learn and decide.
Workforce
How you build a capable, engaged workforce and a supportive environment, and the outcomes it produces.
Operations
How you design, manage and improve key work processes, and the results they deliver.
There is no longer a separate Results category. Results are integrated throughout all six categories, connecting how you work with what that work produces.
How it gets used
Four ways organizations and communities put it to work
A self-assessment
Answer the questions honestly as a leadership team and you'll quickly see where you are strong and where gaps exist. It creates a common language and perspective that drives improvement, alignment, and momentum.
An outside review
Trained examiners evaluate your organization or community and provide a feedback report of strengths to retain and opportunities to improve.
A management system
Many organizations and communities use the Framework as the backbone for planning, measurement and improvement year after year.
A recognition pathway
State and regional recognition acknowledges the team's progress and builds momentum, with award levels leading toward the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.
Clearing things up
Four things people get wrong
“Baldrige is only for big companies.”
Small businesses, school districts, hospitals and clinics, governmental agencies, communities, and nonprofits use it every year. The questions scale to you, and the pathways meet you where you are.
“It's a quality checklist to comply with.”
There is no prescribed way to run your organization or community. Baldrige asks questions based on what high-performing organizations and communities are doing; your answers are your own. It's about getting better at getting better.
“You have to apply for an award.”
Many organizations and communities use the Framework internally for years before ever applying, and some never do.
“It takes a huge team and budget.”
Plenty of organizations and communities start with the Profile — a handful of pages that takes a leadership team a day.
Already using the Framework?
See what a deeper assessment and recognition pathway looks like.
Next steps