This is the top level overview of The Excellence Model, and shows clearly the nine criteria, or main headings, that The Model deals with. Moving from left to right, the first five criteria are Enablers and contain all the issues that any organisation should review, and potentially act upon, to bring about the desired outcomes or results. The right hand four elements are the Results criteria, and these again contain references to all the result areas that organisations might need to apply measures to in order to gain the desired improvements. The leftwards direction of the Innovation and Learning path shows the continuous nature of the setting of targets or expectations, their measurement, and then the adjustments of the various enablers to ensure that targets are met. The cycle then continues with the continual lifting of targets or service levels. This is effectively an application of Deming's Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle.

There is no prescribed approach to using the Model, and it is possible to start by looking at any of the nine criteria, although it would be good a practice to start initially looking at targets and related results areas.