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## Baldrige Performance Excellence Program

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# Baldrige Key Terms

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                    - A
                    -       Action Plan    
Specific actions that your organization takes to reach its strategic objectives. These plans specify the resources committed to and the time horizons for accomplishing the plans. See also strategic objectives.
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                    -       Agility    
A capacity for rapid change and flexibility in operations.****See also resilience.
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                    -       Alignment    
A state of consistency among plans, processes, information, resource decisions, workforce capability and capacity, actions, results, and analyses that support key organization-wide goals. See also integration.
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                    -       Approach    
The methods your organization uses to carry out its processes.
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                    - B
                    -       Benchmarks    
Processes and results that represent the best practices and best performance levels for similar activities, inside or outside your organization’s industry.
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                    - C
                    -       Collaborators    
Organizations or individuals who cooperate with your organization to support a particular activity or event or who cooperate intermittently when their short-term goals are aligned with or are the same as yours. See also partners.
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                    -       Core Competencies    
Your organization’s areas of greatest expertise; those strategically important, possibly specialized capabilities that are central to fulfilling your mission or that provide an advantage in your marketplace or service environment.
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                    -       Culture    
The shared beliefs, norms, and values that characterize your workforce and are demonstrated within your organization.
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                    -       Customer    
An actual or potential user of your organization’s offerings of products, programs, or services. See also stakeholders.
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                    -       Customer Engagement    
Your customers' emotional and intellectual commitment to your brand and product and/or service offerings.
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                    - D
                    -       Deployment    
The extent to which your organization applies an approach in relevant work units throughout your organization.
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                    -       Diversity    
Personal differences among workforce members that enrich the work environment and are representative of your hiring and customer communities.
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                    - E
                    -       Effective    
How well a process or a measure addresses its intended purpose.
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                    -       Ethical Behavior    
The actions your organization and your leaders take to ensure that all your decisions, actions, and stakeholder interactions conform to your moral and professional principles of conduct. These principles should support all applicable laws and regulations and are the foundation for your organization’s culture and values.
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                    - G
                    -       Goals    
Future conditions or performance levels that your organization intends or desires to attain. See also performance projections.
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                    -       Governance    
The system of management and controls exercised in the stewardship of your organization.
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                    - H
                    -       High Performance    
High levels of overall organizational and individual performance, including quality, productivity, innovation rate, and cycle time.
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                    -       How    
The systems and processes that your organization uses to achieve its mission requirements.
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                    - I
                    -       Innovation(s)    
Making meaningful change to improve products, processes, the organization, or societal well-being to increase value for stakeholders. (The Criteria use the term *innovation* as a process/activity and the term *innovations* to refer to the outcomes.)
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                    -       Integration    
The harmonization of plans, processes, information, resource decisions, workforce capability and capacity, actions, results, measures, and analyses to support key organization-wide goals. See also alignment.
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                    -       Intelligent Risks    
Opportunities for which the potential short- or long-term gain or benefit outweighs the potential harm or loss to your organization if you do not explore them.
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                    - K
                    -       Key    
Major or most important; critical to achieving your intended outcome.
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                    -       Knowledge Assets    
Your organization’s accumulated intellectual resources; the knowledge possessed by your organization and its workforce in the form of information, ideas, learning, understanding, memory, insights, cognitive and technical skills, and capabilities.
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                    - L
                    -       Learning    
New knowledge or skills acquired and implemented through evaluation, study, experience, and innovation.
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                    -       Levels    
Numerical information that places or positions your organization’s results and performance on a meaningful measurement scale.
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                    - M
                    -       Measures and Indicators    
Numerical information that quantifies the input, output, and performance dimensions of processes, products, programs, projects, services, and the overall organization (outcomes).
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                    -       Mission    
Your organization’s overall function.
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                    - P
                    -       Partners    
Key organizations or individuals who are working in concert with your organization to achieve a common goal or improve performance. Typically, partnerships are formal arrangements. See also collaborators.
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                    -       Performance    
Outputs and their outcomes obtained from processes, products and services, and strategies that permit you to evaluate and compare your organization’s results to performance projections, standards, past results, goals, and other organizations’ results.
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                    -       Performance Excellence    
An integrated approach to organizational performance management that results in (1) delivery of ever-improving value to customers and stakeholders, contributing to ongoing organizational success; (2) improvement of your organization’s overall effectiveness and capabilities; and (3) learning for the organization and for people in the workforce.
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                    -       Performance Projections    
Estimates of your organization’s future performance. See also goals.
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                    -       Process    
Linked activities with the purpose of producing a product or service for a customer (user) within or outside your organization.
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                    - R
                    -       Resilience    
An organization’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, and recover from disasters, emergencies, and other disruptions, and when disruptions occur, to protect and enhance workforce and customer engagement, supply-network and financial performance, organizational productivity, and community well-being. See also agility.
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                    -       Results    
Outputs and outcomes achieved by your organization.
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                    - S
                    -       Segment    
One part of your organization’s customer, market, product or service offering, or workforce base.
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                    -       Senior Leaders    
Your organization’s senior management group or team.
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                    -       Stakeholders    
All groups that are or might be affected by your organization’s actions and success.
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                    -       Strategic Advantages    
Those benefits that exert a decisive influence on your organization’s likelihood of future success. These advantages are frequently sources of current and future competitive success relative to other providers of similar products.
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                    -       Strategic Challenges    
Those pressures that exert a decisive influence on your organization’s likelihood of future success. These challenges are frequently driven by your organization’s anticipated competitive position in the future relative to other providers of similar products.
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                    -       Strategic Objectives    
The aims or responses that your organization articulates to address major change or improvement, competitiveness or social issues, and business advantages. See also action plans.
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                    -       Strategic Opportunities    
Prospects for new or changed products, services, processes, business models (including strategic alliances), or markets.
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                    -       System    
A set of interrelated leadership and management elements of an organization used to integrate approaches, establish policies and objectives, and manage processes to achieve those objectives.
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                    -       Systematic    
Well-ordered, repeatable, and exhibiting the use of data and information so that learning is possible.
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                    - T
                    -       Trends    
Numerical information that shows the direction and rate of change of your organization’s results or the consistency of its performance over time.
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                    - V
                    -       Value    
The perceived worth of a product or service, process, asset, or function relative to its cost and possible alternatives.
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                    -       Values    
The guiding principles and behaviors that embody how your organization and its people are expected to operate.
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                    -       Vision    
Your organization’s desired future state.
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                    -       Voice of the Customer    
Your process for capturing customer-related information.
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                    - W
                    -       Work Processes    
Your organization’s most important internal value-creation processes.
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                    -       Work Systems    
The coordinated combination of internal work processes and external resources that you need to develop and produce products, deliver them to your customers, and succeed in your marketplace.
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                    -       Workforce    
All people actively supervised by your organization and involved in accomplishing your organization’s core work, including paid employees (e.g., permanent, part-time, temporary, on-site, and remote employees, as well as contract employees supervised by your organization) and some volunteers (e.g., students/interns), as appropriate.
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                    -       Workforce Capability    
Your organization’s ability to accomplish its work processes through your people’s knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies.
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                    -       Workforce Capacity    
Your organization’s ability to ensure sufficient staffing levels to accomplish your work processes and deliver your products to customers, including the ability to meet seasonal or varying demand levels.
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                    -       Workforce Engagement    
The extent of workforce members’ emotional and intellectual commitment to accomplishing your organization’s work, mission, and vision.
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