Beyond performance excellence: research insights from Baldrige recipient feedback

Collectively, the Malcolm Baldrige Award recipients, through a consortium in which many of them participate, have wrestled with the question of how to further improve and achieve higher levels of performance. Through a process of using qualitative text coding to extract, organise, summarise, and interpret vital information from the 'opportunities for improvement' provided to award recipients in Baldrige feedback reports, we have uncovered some significant insights about a sample of Baldrige recipients – insights we believe are fundamental to many contemporary organisations. In this article, we focus on understanding these key challenges and opportunities, and the lessons we can learn from them to help organisations accelerate the process of improving performance, no matter what their level of maturity.