As I join others this year in celebrating 25 years of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, the only improvement program with a prestigious presidential award, I think about the Baldrige’s history of public service, and what the future holds for the only public-private partnership that informs, inspires, and motivates organizations to improve.

I can personally go back to the beginning of the Baldrige story because I became involved in 1991, only a few years after the legislation was passed in 1987 to create the award, and the first awards were given out in 1988. We all know the story. Poor quality was taking its toll and costing U.S. industry the equivalent of 20 percent of sales revenues nationally. To get out of this crisis, we had to find a way to regain our competitive advantage. We did it by embracing performance excellence. Baldrige led the way and continues to do so.

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