"Becoming a [Partners in Performance Excellence] Baldrige Examiner was a rigorous, disciplined and time-consuming immersion in Baldrige theory and practical application.  It challenged my own learnings and applications and led to numerous discussions and debates about how to move our organization towards true excellence. I put a lot more effort into it than I expected, and the returns justified every bit. I would highly recommend the examiner route to any healthcare executive considering the Baldrige journey—it continues to reward long after you're done."

— Peter J. Holden, President & CEO, Jordan Health Systems

2023-24 Key Dates
Deadline for Examiner Applications:

January 5th

April 5th

July 5th

October 5th

Examiner Training: October

 

* All participants are required to complete 8 to 10 hours of prework before the Examiner Training Workshop.

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How To Apply
Apply.....

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About the Examiner Experience

The Partners in Performance Excellence Awards Examiner Experience is our signature program. We use the nationally validated Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence as a comprehensive framework for organizational improvement and innovation. 

  

The Examiner Experience is often compared to an intense, accelerated MBA program because it teaches you how to create total organizational excellence – being a member of an examiner team in this program is the ultimate in professional leadership development. Once completed, you’ll never look at companies in the same fragmented and piecemeal way ever again. It’s enlightening!

  

All our faculty and team coaches guiding you in this program are highly experienced past or present National Baldrige Senior Examiners or Judges. Our state program is amongst the best, as evidenced by the frequent participation of individuals from outside of Massachusetts. We have recently had examiners from Texas, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New York.

 

The Two-Day Examiner Training Workshop

Our two-day examiner training workshop is where we use the actual Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to build your systems thinking and skills in assessing a mock organization’s application developed for training National Baldrige Examiners. This in–depth view of the criteria will incorporate practical exercises in team settings that closely mimic the work for the actual award cycle process. There is minimal required pre-work (8 hours maximum) for attendees to become intimately familiar with one small element of the case study application as this will be the focal point for your work throughout the two days.  This leads to the actual application that you will be analyzing for the Application cycle.  This experience is designed for senior leaders, department managers, practitioners, and business and non-business professionals who want to learn more about what’s important to their organizations and how other organizations have used the Criteria to improve.

 

In the course of two days, we will use the newest Baldrige application case study to:

• Help you understand the key requirements of the seven Baldrige Categories and 17 Items

• Score responses using Approach, Deployment, and Results dimensions

• Focus on understanding and reducing scoring variability

• Pool our knowledge in team-building exercises, learning from each other in the process

• Learn how to evaluate an organization's Award application, appropriately applying the Criteria with due regard for the organization's size, industry, and other factors

• Understand and apply the consensus scoring process

• Add value to the applicant with Feedback Reports

• Apply Now using the Examiner Application.  If you cannot access the application, contact us.

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The Examiner Experience Activities
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Take the first step. Contact Us to discuss your interest and learn more.

Your kick-off webinar and pre-work will take approximately 8 hours.

Examiner training will take two-days.  Examiners and/or their companies pay expenses.

Your first assignment, an independent review, will take approximately 40 to 60 hours.

After completing the independent review, there will be some planning activities to prepare for your facilitated two-day team consensus meeting. During consensus, your team will come to a single outcome originating from the examiner reviews. The team will then create issues to review on your site visit. Although two days seems a lot, you have actually saved a day or two with this facilitation.  Examiners and/or their companies pay expenses.

Prep for your site visit. After several conference calls, each team will visit their applicant’s site for about three days. This is where your major learnings happen. As a category lead, you and each team member will have items to clarify and verify. This will involve interviews and reviewing specialized documents. You may even find it necessary to attend an internal meeting or two.

Immediately after the Site Visit, there is a 2-day off-site session where the team's observations and learnings are captured and refined in a final Site Visit Report which ultimately will be sent to the applicant.  Reasonable travel and dinner expenses are reimbursed.

 Congratulations! You’ve made it and become our most recent certified regional examiner!

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Team Leaders

The Team Leader is pivotal in guiding a team through the process and completing the feedback report. Our Team Leaders all have leadership and teaming skills, and prior State or National Baldrige Examiner experience. We occasionally make exceptions with individuals demonstrating relevant and related skills. If you possess these attributes, enjoy managing volunteers and activities, would like to keep your skills sharp, and you are able to facilitate a team to full closure, this is something we’d be glad to talk to you about. Our Team Leaders are assisted at certain points in the process by our National Baldrige-experienced faculty and coaches.

Once the Team Leader completes the feedback report with your inputs, it is sent to our Panel of Judges for their decision on award level to be given. Team Leaders participate in the deliberations by the judges by answering any questions relevant to the feedback report.

 

Links:

• 2016 Board of Examiners, Judges, Team Leads & Faculty