John Timmerman

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) provides us with the most rigorous and holistic criteria for performance excellence. We have used the Baldrige Users Guide in concert with MBNQA because it provides excellent examples how organizations translate the criteria and practical tools to identify performance gaps that help guide our journey of continuous improvement. 

John C. Timmerman, Corporate Vice President, Operations

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., 1992 & 1999 Baldrige Recipient

Priscilla Nuwash

The Baldrige Users Guide is a great resource for any organization  that is  using the Baldrige Criteria as their business model.  We used it at Poudre Valley Health System during our journey, and are proud that examples of several of our approaches are used in this edition.

Priscilla Nuwash, MBA, Director, Process Improvement

Poudre Valley Health System, 2008 Baldrige Recipient

Eric Franks

The Baldrige User's Guide has enabled us to adopt a critical systems approach. This disciplined framework helped us better understand the criteria linkages, identify gaps, and prioritize opportunities for improvement fostering our organizational excellence journey.

Eric Franks, Manager Technology & Quality Assurance

PRO-TEC Coating Company, 2007 Baldrige Recipient

Nancy Pratt

This Baldrige User's Guide gives a visual and plain English version of the Baldrige Criteria for Excellence. It is enormously helpful in understanding what the Baldrige Examiners are looking for and in giving examples of how other organizations have answered these requirements.

Nancy Pratt

Senior Vice President of Clinical Excellence

Sister Mary Jean Ryan

For us at SSM Health Care, Baldrige has provided three essential things: a focus, a framework, and discipline. We now focus on the things that matter most to our patients. We look at our organization through the broad framework of Baldrige. And we have the discipline to stop doing things just because we've always done them. This book will be an enormous help to organizations that are truly interested in improving the work they do. It is an outstanding resource for any organization that is pursuing performance excellence.

Sister Mary Jean Ryan, FSM

President/CEO, SSM Health Care

Debbie Collard

"The Baldrige Users Guide provides helpful information for diagnosing and improving organizations regardless of your level of experience with the criteria.  Whether you are just starting out or are a seasoned leader or practitioner this book provides explanations, methods, and real-life examples to help you make improvements that will move your organization towards world class performance levels."

Debbie Collard, Director, Program Management and Business Excellence

Boeing IDS

Julia Gabaldon

Quality New Mexico endorses the Baldrige User’s Guide. Through their book John Vinyard and John Latham have made the Baldrige criteria understandable to the novice. Quality New Mexico has used it as a reference in its development of workshops and materials.   

Julia Gabaldon, President/CEO

Quality New Mexico

David Spong

“I would have very much appreciated this book during our Baldrige journey. I encourage you to use it to accelerate your journey. You will find it incredibly rewarding!”

David Spong, President (retired),

Boeing Aerospace Support - The only leader to win Baldrige in two different sectors (Manufacturing 1998 and Service 2003)

David Branch

“This book gives leaders a systematic tool to design their approach to performance excellence. It gives a visual step-by-step understanding of the relationships within one of the most successful business models of our time.”

David Branch, Chairman/President,

Branch-Smith Printing, 2002 Baldrige Winner

Joe Muzikowski

“This book provides anyone who uses the Baldrige Criteria with a better understanding of the linkages among elements and how to leverage their improvement initiatives.”

Joe Muzikowski, Vice President Business Processes,

Solvay America  (Former Chair, Baldrige Panel of Judges 2001-2002)

Steven Hoisington

"Organizational Diagnosis, Design, and Transformation" applies a process approach toward understanding the application of Baldrige criteria on any type and size organization in a non-threatening manner. The use of examples and work sheets throughout makes this a practical tool and brings the criteria to life. Mr. Vinyard and Dr. Latham are leaders who have written a hands-on text for leaders."

Steven Hoisington, Vice President, Quality and Reliability,

Electro-Motive Diesels, Inc.

Richard Schuttler

“Finally, an easy to use manual that examines the concepts of organizational assessment and diagnosis with straightforward tools to apply toward achieving measurable improvements immediately! Latham and Vinyard offer a balance between theoretical and practical approaches to organizational diagnosis and intervention, with special emphasis on the impact of the leader’s role in determining healthy directions for a changing organization.”

Richard Schuttler, Ph.D., Former Dean,

School of Advanced Studies, University of Phoenix

Jim Zurn

“Their Diagnosis-Design-Transformation structure transcends traditional application of Baldrige's Performance Excellence Criteria using Categories and Items. It is written for ease-of-use by business leaders and experienced quality and operational practitioners. It is clear that organizations, both those examining Baldrige Criteria use for the first time as well as organizations seasoned in criteria application, can quickly find business value by looking through the unique lens offered in this book.”

Jim Zurn, Senior Manager, Corporate Operational Excellence,

Intel Corporation

Roy Holley

I have been privileged to a member of a Baldrige team at a major service company who won the award, and consulting projects where the criteria was the major template for improvement. This is, by far, the best effort I have seen which strategically presents and describes the criteria, then provides practical counsel on how to apply it. As such, it is invaluable to examiners and consultants, and especially so to senior leaders and internal change agents attempting to improve performance within the Baldrige framework. The authors' lucid explanations of the key linkages within the criteria are alone worth the purchase price. The software included is worth many times the price. If you are serious about using the Baldrige criteria, this is a book you cannot afford to be without.

Al Doeve

If the Baldrige Framework represents a 1987 U.S. milestone towards a comprehensive approach to organization excellence, the Baldrige User Guide by John Latham and John Vinyard represents a landmark synthesis of our collective learning and applications to date. The guide faithfully concatenates Categories, Items and Areas To Address of the Baldrige criteria into, of all things, a process description of what it all means for new users, assessors and even advanced users of the performance criteria.

The authors accomplish this with comprehensive blueprints that link key elements of the criteria, brief and effective explanatory comments, real-time examples from Baldrige winners, assessor questions and worksheets. For the new and committed user of the Baldrige Framework, the user’s guide makes intuitive, practical and valuable “connections that previously were not obvious” (David Sprong, Foreword).

Who should invest in this paperback/CD toolkit? Those getting acquainted with the criteria as well as national and state examiners will clutch the user’s guide as indispensable. I make this claim as a practitioner (for profit, non-profit) who has benefited from services delivered by a Baldrige winner, has participated in a team that delivered an application for assessment and has experience as a state examiners. What catapults the value of the guide is its ABC organization around focus, three competencies for performance excellence and the journey undertaken by willing organizations. The authors’ approach towards an egalitarian Baldrige Framework successfully deconstructs the density of the official BNQP criteria, organizes and visually clarifies linkages real and implied using blueprints, breaks through (by at least 20%!) new understandings suggesting exactly how and what’s Leadership, Execution Excellence and Organizational Learning.

You can buy this with experience, but the user’s guide cuts your time investment without cutting corners. After all, the book is the authentic product of “thousands of person years” (not from the authors alone). Indeed, the authors dispense contribution credit far and wide to those intimately involved with Baldrige Framework development as well as those committed to achieve extra-ordinary results through their work within winning (and learning) organizations.

There are nuggets of clarity and closure throughout the text, illuminating the authors’ substantial knowledge of customers (government, industrial, worldwide) with generous sharing of applied criteria nuance in challenging environments. For example, Thoughts For Leaders vignettes (over 20 are sprinkled throughout) address the value of process documentation, innovation by the leadership, sustainable competitive advantage. The nuggets help organization architects of all stripes arrive at additional insights with respect to systems thinking, core values, organization factors and the maturity of business competencies.

The user’s guide comes with a CD featuring all the consumables you need to drive diagnosis, design and transformation (DDT), including the blueprints, worksheets (two formats), scoring guide, criteria (three versions – business, education and healthcare) with all the benefits of online document management.

When a publication lends high clarity, model synthesis, practical insight, tool utility and structured approaches to organizational transformation for excellence, it is appropriate to invest. This market analyst says “buy.”

Al Doeve, Loyalti Corporation

Board Of Examiners, Georgia Oglethorpe Award Process 2003

John Latham and John Vinyard (c) 2003 - 2010

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