Preface: Organizational Profile
The Organizational Profile provides an overview of your organization. The profile addresses your operating environment, your key organizational relationships, your competitive environment and strategic context, and your approach to performance improvement. Your Organizational Profile provides a framework for understanding your organization. It helps the Baldrige examiners and judges when reviewing your application to understand what you consider important. It also helps you to guide and prioritize the information you present in response to the Criteria items in categories 1–7.
The Organizational Profile provides your organization with critical insight into the key internal and external factors that shape your operating environment. These factors, such as the vision, values, mission, core competencies, competitive environment, and strategic challenges and advantages, impact the way your organization is run and the decisions you make. As such, the Organizational Profile helps your organization better understand the context in which it operates; the key requirements for current and future organizational success and sustainability; and the needs, opportunities, and constraints placed on your organization’s management systems.
P.1 Organizational Description: What are your key organizational characteristics?
Purpose
This item addresses the key characteristics and relationships that shape your organizational environment. It also addresses your organization’s governance system. The aim is to set the context for your organization and for your responses to the Criteria requirements in categories 1–7.
Comments
■ The use of such terms as “purpose,” “vision,” “values,” “mission,” and “core competencies” varies depending on the organization, and some organizations may not use one or more of these terms. Nevertheless, you should have a clear understanding of the essence of your organization, why it exists, and where your senior leaders want to take the organization in the future. This clarity enables you to make and implement strategic decisions affecting the future of your organization.
■ A clear identification and thorough understanding of your organization’s core competencies are central to organizational sustainability and competitive performance. Executing your core competencies well is frequently a market differentiator. Keeping your core competencies current with your strategic directions can provide a strategic advantage, and protecting intellectual property contained in your core competencies can support sustainability.
■ The regulatory environment in which you operate places requirements on your organization and impacts how you run your organization. Understanding this environment is key to making effective operational and strategic decisions. Further, it allows you to identify whether you are merely complying with the minimum requirements of applicable laws, regulations, and standards of practice or exceeding them, a hallmark of leading organizations.
■ Leading organizations have well-defined governance systems with clear reporting relationships. It is important to clearly identify which functions are performed by senior leaders and, as applicable, by your governance board/policymaking body and your parent organization. Board independence and accountability frequently are key considerations in the governance structure.
■ Suppliers may play critical roles in processes that are important to running the organization and to maintaining or achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Supply-chain requirements might include on-time or just-in-time delivery; flexibility; variable staffing; research and design capability; innovation of processes, programs, or services; and customized services.
P.2 Organizational Situation: What is your organization’s strategic situation?
Purpose
This item addresses the competitive environment in which your organization operates, including your key strategic challenges and advantages. It also addresses how you approach performance improvement, including organizational learning and innovation processes. The aim is to understand your key organizational challenges and your system for establishing and preserving your competitive advantage.
Comments
■ Knowledge of an organization’s strengths, vulnerabilities, and opportunities for improvement and growth is essential to the success and sustainability of the organization. With this knowledge, you can identify those educational programs and services, processes, competencies, and performance attributes that are unique to your organization; those that set you apart from other organizations; those that help you to preserve your competitive advantage; and those that you must develop to sustain or build your market position.
■ Understanding who your competitors are, how many you have, and their key characteristics is essential for determining what your competitive advantage is in your education sector and market. Leading organizations have an in-depth understanding of their current competitive environment, including key changes taking place.
■ Sources of comparative and competitive data might include education publications; benchmarking activities; national, state, and local reports; conferences; local networks; and education associations. Comparative and competitive data may also be obtained from benchmarking activities utilizing national or state norms, from local or regional consortia