Assessing for Excellence

”All European organisations, both in the public and private sectors, are facing new challenges. The increasing pressure to compete on a global stage with limited resources means we all have to work together to secure our future prosperity, and that of generations to come. The EFQM Excellence Model provides a framework that encourages the cooperation, collaboration and innovation that we will need to ensure this goal is achieved.”

Herman van Rompuy, President of the European Council


The achievement of excellence is not an abstract theory; it relates to an organisation’s tangible achievements in what it does, how it does it, the results it gets and the confidence that these results will be sustained in the future. Achieving excellence is hard enough at the best of times; sustaining it in today’s world of increasing global competition, rapid technological innovation, changing processes and frequent movement in economic, social and customer environments, is even harder.


Using a process EFQM calls self-assessment, organisations have the possibility to produce a comprehensive picture of their overall fitness at a given moment in time. This picture, which gives valuable feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation’s approaches across all its activities, provides a powerful driver for meaningful improvement. 


In this publication, we explain some of the techniques and tools available to support the self-assessment cycle in your organisation.