So a big thank you to all who are buying my book.  Presumably you also want agility in your [...]]]> A friend ordered a copy of my latest book, “Strategy Mapping for learning organizations” from Amazon earlier this week and discovered there were only two left.   Today I checked and there are on back order.

So a big thank you to all who are buying my book.  Presumably you also want agility in your balanced scorecards.

If anyone is desperate for a copy of “Strategy Mapping for learning organizations”, and Amazon is out of stock you can either get it from the Publisher Gower (Where to buy Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations) or in extreme circumstances I have a few.   If you ask me nicely I might even sign it for you.  ;-)

Thanks for your support

Phil Jones

If you are looking for an electronic version of my Book about strategy maps, balanced scorecards for agile organisations and how to design, implement and use them effectively, then there are several links available.

UK versions (priced in pounds) are available [...]]]> My publishers tell me that Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations is now available as an ebook.

If you are looking for an electronic version of my Book about strategy maps, balanced scorecards for agile organisations and how to design, implement and use them effectively, then there are several links available.

UK versions (priced in pounds) are available from

• ebooks.com will sell you an electronic copy of Strategy Mapping via this link.  It can either be an online version or via a download.

US versions (priced in dollars) are available from

• Powells books an ebook version of Strategy  Mapping for Learning Organizations
• Diesel books an ebook version of Strategy  Mapping for Learning Organizations

At the moment the ebook edition of “Strategy Mapping for Learning Organizations” is only be available in PDF (Adobe Digital Editions) format with DRM and will be priced the same as the print edition so in this case £70.00/$134.95. However there is VAT on ebooks so it may work out more expensive.  You may find that different sites will sell it at a variety of discounts so it always worth looking around.

For Kindle fans, you might have to wait a while.  Amazon decide when they convert books to Kindle format and it is not in the control of the publisher.  As soon as it is available we will let you know.

I understand many corporates will have access to libraries where electronic copies can be borrowed and even shared amongst their colleagues.    This sound particularly useful when doing strategic balanced scorecard implementations.  In these cases contact your corporate library provider who can get hold of ebook copies via the  publisher, Gower/Ashgate.

Phil Jones

Author, Speaker & Consultant

I give away a lot in this book. I recently met a colleague over dinner and we discussed Balanced scorecard design for over 2 hours.  Almost everything we talked about I could [...]]]> It’s official folks.  You can now order and get copies of my guide to developing, implementing and using Strategy Maps to create effective, agile, strategic balanced scorecards.

I give away a lot in this book. I recently met a colleague over dinner and we discussed Balanced scorecard design for over 2 hours.  Almost everything we talked about I could reference sections in the book, particularly when we were talking about engaging the executive team in then strategic balanced scorecard and designing strategy maps that captured and communicated the business model of the organisation

There are currently two ways to obtain the book and both can be accessed  through my website:

a) Amazon.co.uk now has it available and I am reliably informed that they are delivering pretty quick.

b) Through Gower.  Clicking through to the publisher’s website will get you a 10% discount.  More importantly they will ship Strategy Mapping to anywhere in the  world for you.    This is where I point my overseas (non-UK clients).

Although listed in Amazon.com, for the  US market, Strategy Mapping was not yet available at the time of writing on Amazon.com.  However  you can get a copy through the publishers US arm Ashgate publishing via this link (Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations published in the US)

If you are after multiple copies of the  book for your balanced Scorecard training course, team or performance management specialists, do drop me a line and I can put you in touch with the publisher.

Happy reading.

Phil

Well, my new book, “Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations” is due out in December 2011, and I am delighted, honoured and humbled that David Norton himself, has written a Foreword for [...]]]> I cannot tell you how chuffed I am.  I will admit I even did a little dance the other day.  Why you might ask?

Well, my new book, “Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations” is due out in December 2011, and I am delighted, honoured and humbled that David Norton himself, has written a Foreword for the book.  Yes David P Norton of Norton and Kaplan fame, who together co-authored the original “Balanced Scorecard” book, and four other books since: “The Strategy Focused Organization”, “Strategy Maps”, “Alignment” and most recently “The Execution Premium”.

To have David Norton write a foreword for my book is in itself is a great honour. You can imagine how quickly I got onto my publishers to ensure that “Foreword by David P Norton” was included on the front cover.

However, I want to tell you what really made me chuffed.  Of course David picks up on the fact that I am talking about Balanced scorecards and strategy maps from a perspective of behaviours: how people think about strategy and performance.  Particularly, that the book explores how executives think about their strategy, their approach to performance management and the role of their Strategic Balanced Scorecard.  David Norton refers to the book’s emphasis on both the left and right brain activities involved. Not simply the processes and techniques that “the engineers amongst us” so love (David’s background is engineering).

David picked up the point that much of the book is written from the Balanced Scorecard Faciliator’s perspective, as well as the executive and leader:

“Using the Balanced Scorecard/Strategy Map methodologies as his point of departure, Phil describes their use in practice from the perspective of a facilitator.”

So of course the facilitator is working with the executive and management teams, the leadership teams, when they are developing their balanced scorecard and their strategy map. From the leadership perspective, David highlighted that successful leaders are also right brained. As he puts it:

“Our experience, however, indicates that effective leaders need more than a toolkit. 

Successful leaders are intuitive; they have a sense of what needs to be done. Successful leaders are communicators; they need to simplify and target complex messages.

Successful leaders are motivators; they need to show ‘what’s in it for me.’

Successful leaders have a strong ‘right brain’. “

Building upon this he continues:

“The reality of a performance management system is that it must support both the left brain (structure) and right brain (intuitive) of a user. In fact, the left and right brain activities should be integrated.”

He makes an interesting point that I had not explicitly mentioned in the book, thought all the clues are there.

“Jointly building a strategy map (a “left brain” approach) helps create the teamwork.

An executive senses a need to break down traditional siloes (a “right brain” need). Cascading the strategy map (a “left brain” solution) helps to cut across siloes and create a holistic view of the organization.

Cascading the strategy map (a “left brain” solution) helps to cut across siloes and create a holistic view of the organization.”

He continues to a point that for me gets to the heart of why so many balanced scorecards become operational collections of measures.  And why so many people miss the important subtleties and principles that he and Bob Kaplan talk about in their books.  The underlying difference.

“We tend to think of a performance management system as a collection of structured methodologies and tools.  By its very nature, it is easier to describe that which is structured than that which is unstructured.

I believe the Balanced Scorecard approach has been effective, in part, because the left-brain structured approaches complement the right brain needs of a leader.“

Then he asks a vital question: 

“But what are these leadership needs that help mobilize, focus and align the organization?“

I will admit the next line he wrote shocked me.  Not because I disagreed or the answer he gave, but how he framed the answer.  He says…

“This is where the work of Phil Jones makes a unique contribution to the field of performance management.”

I will admit I was stunned by that.  I had to read that again, “Phil Jones makes a unique contribution to the field of performance management.”  Wow!   I firmly believe that the whole behavioural side of strategy and performance management is not given enough emphasis.  It is all too process and toolkit based.  Much of my work over the last 15 years has been focused on the behavioural aspects.  many regular readers will know I frequently say, “It is not about measures, it is about behaviours Stupid!”  So to have David Norton endorse my “Strategy Mapping for Learning Organizations” in  such a way was truly humbling.  (And I did indeed do a little jig at this point).

David’s final paragraph also made me smile, for two reasons.  Its complement and it humour.  For David finishes off the Foreword with the paragraph

“This book is a “drivers manual” for anyone who is implementing a Balanced Scorecard performance management system.

Whether you drive on the left or the right, it is required reading.”

Well!   David Norton finishing off with “Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations” is required reading, put the icing on the cake.

So I am very grateful to David for his kind words and taking the time from his busy schedule to do a foreword for me.  And also very honoured.  I am delighted that David picked up on the left and right brain aspects of the balanced scorecard, strategy maps and the whole approach in the book.  This sort of thinking underpins the Fourth Generation Balanced Scorecard approach I have developed.   I hope you don’t mind me sharing my small moment of glory with you.

If you would like to read the Foreword in full, or even buy the book, you can find out more about Strategy Mapping for Learning Organizations, on the book’s page of my website.

Signed,

A rather chuffed Phil Jones.

You can find out more about “Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations” here

Within the first six months we had speed: we had our solution up and running to demonstrate a net-market for trading materials between cable manufacturers and their suppliers.  (The solution cost around [...]]]> Back in the dot.com boom around 2000 I was Chief Technology Officer of a start-up that changed direction 180 degrees in 6 months.

Within the first six months we had speed: we had our solution up and running to demonstrate a net-market for trading materials between cable manufacturers and their suppliers.  (The solution cost around £200k – it had to, we only had £5 million of initial funding for the  first 18 months).  However despite getting to market quickly,  it soon became apparent this was not what the industry wanted.  Suppliers worked cooperatively with their customers: it was not a “drive price down market” but a trusted relationship where suppliers helped with R&D and technology developments.  What did we do?

In month seven we produced a prototype collaborative supply chain solution for the same market and demonstrated it to a cable manufacturing company.  Five or six months later one of the biggest cable manufacturers in the US bought our solution for their 300 suppliers and the net-market was quietly dropped.   We had conducted a complete strategy change inside six months.  Now that is speed and agility.

According to a McKinsey survey Agility and speed is what organisations want.  In Building a nimble organization: A McKinsey Global Survey Executives are convinced they can boost business performance by improving how well the organization can shift its strategic direction and how fast it can execute its operational objectives, but at the same time they are grappling with how to achieve this.    Nearly 90% of respondents said agility: the ability to change direction was important.  Over 85% said that speed, the ability to deliver objective quickly, was important.  Bear in mind that this survey was in 2006, two years before the credit crisis where agility and speed were tested to extremes for many organisations and the realisation for the need increased further.

So what stops organisational agility and speed?  The organisational barriers highlighted in this survey are clear, but varied:  Over centralisation and yet a lack of coordination.  Slow decision making yet poorly communicated objectives.  Boundaries that restrict information flow and restrictive rules and practices.

The behavioural and cultural barriers show a similar picture:  Employees show a lack of purpose, they tend to refer decisions upwards, company politics consuming time, over-analysing decisions and failing to hold individuals to account.

In their later view on organisational agility Competing through organizational agility, (2009) they define three types of agility that help organisations to compete: strategic, portfolio, and operational agility.  They suggest that many organisations rely on a single source of agility – just one of strategic agility, portfolio agility, or operational agility and suggest this can be dangerous.  This comes from the work of Don Sull is professor of management practice at the London Business School and author of The Upside of Turbulence.

What are these three forms of agility:  They define them as follows:

1) Organisational agility is your organisation’s ability to exploit revenue improvement and cost reduction opportunities within its core business.  To do this  more quickly, effectively, and consistently than your rivals.

2) Portfolio agility: This is your ability to re-allocate cash and more importantly people, across your portfolio or companies, businesses and operations, to best effect.  The Sage of Omaha would like this – asking where best to allocate capital and resources.

3) Strategic agility: Despite reading the article three times their definition of strategic agility is not spelt out.  It seems to rest on the ability of managers to monitor for unexpected events, seize opportunities and mitigate risks.

I think we can be more precise than this.  We believe strategic agility is about managements ability to ask refine, test and revise their strategy based upon the three main questions from our Strategic learning Model.  A model that in part evolved to accommodate the rapid change of strategy that we as a management team experienced in that dot.com.  Those three questions are:

1) Operationally how are we doing,is this working?  Do we need to change things?

2) Is our strategy working as we expected – if not how do we refine and change it and re-communicate and re-socialise it.  Can we re-plan and re-allocate resources? Do we need to refine how the strategy is being implemented?

3) Is our strategy still relevant?  Are we monitoring the external environment for changes, assumptions, risks, and competitor moves or moves in the market?  Do we need to change the strategy slightly or fundamentally?

These are the three main questions defined by the strategic learning model that we use with all our clients. It is based on a model of how people and organisations learn.   The great feature of the strategic learning model is that it will handle traditional top down annual strategy, planning, budgeting and implementation.  It will also handle iterative, entrepreneurial, bottom up strategy.  It can be operated at any speed you like depending upon the drivers and events or the speed of responsiveness required.  Thus an organisation, and its management teams, can learn to be more strategic, then more agile, and then add speed as well.

These two McKinsey articles are well worth reading.  They have some great examples, but leave you wondering what to do next.

Our answer to that is to for you to look at our strategic learning model and ask yourself the question – how well are we doing each of these arrows on this diagram?

Our answer to the problems of organisational behaviour and culture is to start treating people as human beings, and to improve the organisation’s decision making a management team at a time.  This is a part of our culture of performance approach.

The traditional models of customer intimacy, differentiation, and markets being “talked at” by companies, are being replaced.  (See Grant Leboff, Sticky marketing)  Social media and other internet technology means that the conversations amongst customers have much wider credibility.  [...]]]> We are seeing new business models emerge:  Can our approach to managing strategy and performance accommodate them?

The traditional models of customer intimacy, differentiation, and markets being “talked at” by companies, are being replaced.  (See Grant Leboff, Sticky marketing)  Social media and other internet technology means that the conversations amongst customers have much wider credibility.   The market has become a conversation and organisations must talk with a Human voice. (See the Cluetrain Manifesto) .   This requires different ways of thinking about the relationship between the interface between the organisation and those who participate in conversations with it.  (See The New Capitalist Agenda)

New models of business take this further.  Customers now participate inside organisations, be that as contributors of content and providing reviews (Amazon and ebay), choosing new products (Threadless & Walkers crisps), or even becoming its designers and developers (WordPress and Redhat).    This is not new:  we have seen aspects of it in the B2B market for over 20 years.  However the extent of use of this model has increased dramatically.  Intimacy is no longer an adequate word: The customer has come inside the organisation.

This brings new questions:  How do we develop the capability to facilitate and introduce customers inside our organisation.

Our fourth generation strategy map model not only accommodates such radical business models.

Refined, tuned and tested in the last dot.com boom, it goes further and helps you to think through how you adapt your attitudes and thinking to accept that your role is no longer to be the expert. Rather the role of management becomes to facilitate others (outside the organisation) to help us be successful.   Now that requires a mind-set change.

“Our capacity to improve the state of the world is ultimately bounded by our capacity to manage.”

If we want to change the world then our ability to [...]]]> Being a manager rarely gets the credit it deserves.  Flicking through Gary Hamel’s blog on Management 2.0 for Wall Street Journal, I came across this excellent quote

“Our capacity to improve the state of the world is ultimately bounded by our capacity to manage.”

If we want to change the world then our ability to do that is limited and constrained by our ability to manage.   Therefore management is the fundamental skill we need to change things.

Gary goes further.  He suggests that “management is one of humankind’s most important inventions”…  “quite simply, the technology of human accomplishment.”

Now put like this it does promote “being a manager” to an important role.  It does make a mockery of all those who complain how much managers get paid, when they are actually bringing about change and improvement.   It is an elegant re-framing of the idea of management and its role in the world at large.  Without managers what would get done?   Darn we would be left with the politicians and the workers.

One of the legs of our fourth generation strategic management approach is helping managers create a culture of performance for people to perform in.   Clearly managers also need the space and permission to perform, and this framing of the idea certainly helps that.

First recognise that different tools in the overall Balanced Scorecard approach to strategic management are for different planning horizons.  Tangible future for 10 years, strategy map for 2-5 years, and scorecards measures for 12-24 months, whilst targets [...]]]> So what planning horizon should I use for my balanced scorecard?  1 year, 2 years, 6, 10 perhaps?

First recognise that different tools in the overall Balanced Scorecard approach to strategic management are for different planning horizons.  Tangible future for 10 years, strategy map for 2-5 years, and scorecards measures for 12-24 months, whilst targets and actions are only 6- 12 months  (typically).

It also depends entirely on the industry and their situation.  I have worked with clients where the time horizon for strategy and their strategy map is 3 to 5 to 10 years.  I have worked with at least two clients whose planning had to be limited to 12 months.  I have had others whose planning horizons were three generations (c 60 years).  The scorecard on the  other hand is usually refreshed every 12-24 months at various levels.

In part it depends on the capital intensity of the industry, so aircraft design, investment in oil and gas exploration and long term planning for a society or community is typically operating around 20 years.

Sure, stuff changes.  More importantly assumptions prove wrong or risks and concerns come to fruition.  That is why we help clients invest in EPIs: External Predictive indicators or listen to this webcast about External Predictive Indicators

By the way I think it is a a nonsense to suggest that “today’s pace of change is faster than before”.  Take any decade over the past 100 years and look  at the changes, especially the 1910′s (first world war) the 20, global recession bigger than the last one, the 30′s technology advancement, the 40′s again a global war, I could continue.  it is only because we are in it that it seems to change so much.  Its only a matter of perspective.

Neither is it about guessing revenues.  It is about thinking through the structure of an industry, the demands of consumers and how the business models will change.  Then looking for persistent patterns of behaviour that will underpin positions (and ultimately lead to revenue).