By developing the scorecard you look for the right measures that will cascade as meaningful drivers of the behaviours and results of others.  However, in making those steps [...]]]> If you have ever tried to cascade measures on a balanced scorecard you have a problem that is common to many starting down the balanced scorecard route.

By developing the scorecard you look for the right measures that will cascade as meaningful drivers of the behaviours and results of others.  However, in making those steps the gap between strategy and action widens.  What is the right measure?  Will this be meaningful?  Will it encourage the right results?  Will it encourage the right behaviour?  The uncertainty grows.  The meaning starts to disappear.  The worries build:  will these measures be meaningful and create the  right behaviours?

Let me explain where some of these problems lie…

Back when I started working for Norton & Kaplan in 1994, soon after their first book was published I would look at old projects and cases on the servers and talk to people about them.  I realised three important things:

1)      that the scorecard was the last piece you developed.

2)      It was about engaging managers and how they were thinking.  That is what needs to be communicated.

The first insight helps you realise that BEFORE to think about any measures you have to develop a strategy map for that team.  You also need a view of the future  and how the strategy will change the organisation.   This is where 90% of so called “Balanced scorecards” go wrong.   Only when this strategy map has captured the strategy, the business model and the thinking of the management team do you even think about starting the scorecard.  If you miss out capturing the strategy you have mere operational measures.

The second insight is that it is about how managers think and talk about their strategy.  Strategy maps help you tell the story of the strategy so people get it.  (That is why my first book was “Communicating Strategy”).  Mere scorecards don’t do this.  Strategy maps and scorecards together do achieve this (If you develop them by engaging the hearts and minds of the team).  This way they can tell the story of their strategy (backed up with the scorecard). When you track progress you use both.  That way you can tell whether things are working operationally and the strategy is working as well.

Developing a balanced scorecard is not an intellectual exercise.  It is a social process.

3)      Finally, there is one piece that almost everyone misses.  YOU DO NOT CREATE A BALANCED SCORECARD FOR AN ORGANISATION!

Yes really!  What you do is create a strategy map and scorecard for each management team.  The problem is that in Norton & Kaplan’s books, to simplify the story, they tend to show a strategy map for the executive team and describe it as the organisation’s strategy map.  It is, but there are others beneath it.   I know because I worked on a few of those cases and examples.  It is this cascade of strategy maps (before you develop scorecards) the solves the problems you are facing.  Miss this out and you will have one strategy map and 120 measures!  Precisely the problem that the balanced scorecard approach was designed to solve.

So what can you do?

1)      You could buy my book, “Strategy Mapping for learning organizations”.

1. Dear David Norton said, It is a must read book for anyone doing a strategic balanced scorecard based performance management system.  That was very kind given he has written 5 books on the subject with Bob Kaplan.
2. There are whole chapters on cascading scorecards (or rather strategy maps) and it introduces the cascade map that solves your problem at source.  How to buy Strategy Mapping for learning organizations

2)      You could have me do consultancy for your clients.  My contact details for Balanced Scorecard consultancy are at the top of the page and here on the main website

Strategy maps are fundamental to effective balanced scorecard design and this book describes not simply a set of [...]]]> There was a short delay before Strategy Mapping for learning Organizations was available in the US, but checking in with Amazon.com it is now available.    You can link through to Amazon.com easily via this link.

Strategy maps are fundamental to effective balanced scorecard design and this book describes not simply a set of strategy maps to copy, not simply what you do to create strategy maps, but how you think about strategy maps and their implications for executives, and staff during their  design, implementation and use.

Armed with this knowledge your organisations will be far more likely to leverage the benefits of your balanced scorecards.   As David Norton himself says,

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

“This book is a ‘drivers manual’ for anyone who is implementing a Balanced Scorecard performance management system. [...] it is required reading.”

David P Norton, October 2011
Author: The Balanced Scorecard. Founder and Director: Palladium Group, Inc.
(David, along with Robert Kaplan, is one of the originators of the Balanced Scorecard Approach.)

What better recommendation could I have?

So if you are looking for David Norton’s “Required reading”  then you can get it now.  Here is a quick link to more details [...]]]> Checking in with Amazon UK again and they have re-stocked “Strategy Mapping for Learning organizations”.  So hopefully they will keep a good stock in place now they it is in demand.

So if you are looking for David Norton’s “Required reading”  then you can get it now.  Here is a quick link to more details about “Strategy Mapping for learning organizations” and how you can buy it.

Alternatively click on the image to go straight to Amazon UK.

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

They had a really good lean deployment methodology which they had learnt  from [...]]]> Recently a client was having a few problems with their planning process.  How to engage with their managers, getting the tools of strategy and performance to make coherent sense as a whole, making the story of their strategy clear, making it easy to manage and deliver.

They had a really good lean deployment methodology which they had learnt  from Unipart: it included the Lean Policy deployment Matrix (Sometimes known as the Strategy deployment Matrix). This was being used to cascade the overall corporate objectives, to cascade the main change programmes, and align projects, deliverables and results locally in business units.

At the same time they were using a simplified scorecard, from the  balanced scorecard approach, for Business As Usual measures and targets.  This was divided into domains and contained “KPIs” and targets.

The problem was there appeared no clear link between the cascade of strategy using the  Policy Deployment Matrix and the  BAU scorecard.   They were therefore using, what they called, at strategy map, to create a set of local objectives that showed how a local business unit would contribute to the overall strategic objectives.  However this was not a Norton & Kaplan Strategy Map, but simply a link of strategic to local objectives.

All this was not fitting together well: How did the policy deployment matrix’s measures and deliverables link to the Business as usual  (BAU) scorecard measures/KPIs?  How did change affect BAU?   Were these the right things to be measuring?  Would they distort behaviours?

They were also in  the middle of their planning round.  They needed to find a way through this set of tools that made sense, without starting again.  (A catch was  that neither the BAU scorecard, nor the Policy Deployment matrix could be changed.  They were corporate standard.)

Now, the scorecard clearly derived from Norton & Kaplan Balanced Scorecard thinking (excect they had missed some steps, lost cause and effect, discarded local objectives and ignored the projects).

The Unipart Policy Deployment Matrix also derived from Norton & Kaplan thinking:  The Unipart guys acknowledged this in their paper “Hoshin Kanri, or get your ducks in a row (See my article specifically about Lean Policy Deployment matrices).

So we took a step back, created some proper Strategy maps, from the modern balanced scorecard methodology, that described the local business units,  and then laid their existing measures, targets, deliverables, objectives and KPIs on top on these new strategy maps.  (You can read more about developing strategy maps in my book).

Guess what?  Everything suddenly became clear.

• They had a picture of each business unit and how it operated.
• They had a clear description of how that business unit supported its customers, which in turn contributed to the wider strategic objectives.
• They could see where Business as usual measures were located in the process and clearly see what they were measuring.
• They had a clear view of where the change projects affected the local units and how they would drive change.
• They also had a view of the underlying capabilities that each business unit needed to learn, grow and develop to become more effective and position itself long term.

Most importantly, from a facilitator’s perspective  they had tools that facilitated conversation and discussion with the executives and managers in the business units

• They had a tools that they could check the  overall picture.
• They had the understanding of how these pieces fitted together
• They had tools of conversation about strategy and performance as well as business as usual

They did not need to change their existing tools (The policy deployment matrix or scorecard ) but they were able to see clearly how they could adapt it, without breaking the corporate rules, to make them both clearer and easier to use.

Our approach is to help clients understand their tools so they can use them better.  Such tools should support strategy and change and should make managing business as usual, easy and clear.  When they get in the  way and act to obscure the  picture they are doing the organisation a dis-service, rather than service.  Potentially distorting behaviours, causing people to focus on the wrong thing, and managers to manage the wrong things. All of which leads to missed opportunities, poor operational performance and a failure to implement necessary change and transformation in the strategy.

To avoid these sorts of problems and improve your planning and performance management approach, give us a call.  We are happy to have an initial conversation about your needs.

I think  ”Good Strategy – Bad Strategy” by Richard Rumelt is one of the  best books on strategy I have come across.  I was one of the first to read it, and once [...]]]> This post is about using the  approach in “Good Strategy Bad Strategy” to question, review and develop an organisation’s strategy.

I think  ”Good Strategy – Bad Strategy” by Richard Rumelt is one of the  best books on strategy I have come across.  I was one of the first to read it, and once I picked it up I had trouble putting it down.  Now that is quite a compliment for a management book, especially one on Strategy.

As a strategy consultant who has tried most strategic analysis approaches in his time, there are three reasons I like this book:

1) The first, it sticks a sharp pin in many of the supposed approaches to strategy that include having  passion,  mistaking goals for strategy, and a failure to face the  challenge of strategy

2) It makes a clear distinction between strategies, and strategy.  Strategies and options you might choose.  Strategy is about thinking through what the problem that you are facing is and finding guiding policies and actions to address those challenges.  This might include some strategies, but these should not be confused with thinking strategically.

3) Most importantly, it provides an elegantly simple (but not simplistic)set of three questions that you have to address to be strategic.    Three questions that apply in any context.

Those three questions are:

a) What is the  problem?  What is the situation? What is the story diagnosis of the problem and its story?  Unless you understand this you are not addressing a strategy.

b) Given the diagnosis of the situation, what guiding principles and policies should now be applied.  The elegant part of this is that this is where “strategies” are useful, but teh guiding policies might not be as sophisticated as a grand strategy, simply a statement that channels energy and effort.

c) What therefore are the coherent actions.  Strategy has to be implemented and the coherence of the actions is the manifestation of the guiding principles in action.  If the actions are not consistent with the guiding principles, they should not be carried out as they won’t address the diagnosis of the problem.

Given this simple framework, I set to work with a Professional Services business, analysing their strategy.

The first step was to create three areas on the wall to contain the thoughts from the three main questions: Situation, Guiding policies and coherent actions.  Then we concentrated on the first area.  The first stage was to brain dump all the problems and phrases that described the situation so we could develop a set of problem areas and descriptions of those areas that the  team could agree.  As the picture  developed these started to manifest themselves into seven or eight situations areas (two of which were relatively positive and the others had more negative connotations.   As the work progressed, these were developed into a short story for each area.

We them moved across to the guiding principles and started developing ideas that would address the problem areas that were developing.  This started a process of iteration moving between:

1) What potential principles might we apply?

2) Do we actually have the  story correct, and what evidence do we have?

3) What sources of guidance should we look for.  In this case, a professional services firm, two useful sources of strategy options were David Maister’s work “Managing the professional services firm” and Treacy & Wiersema’s “The discipline of market leaders”.    Clearly other sources could be used to address other aspects.

This iterative process continued for 2-3 days as the team explored options, developed ideas,  sought counsel in evidence and material, discussed options among themselves.  One noticeable feature was the frequent return to the stories and situations to ensure they were complete.  As the work progressed, additional areas of problem and analysis were also exposed.  The iterative development of the guiding principles could not be completed until the  the team were completely happy with their analysis of the situation.

One thing that helped, was to line up the areas of guiding policies, with the situation analysis , so that the story read well across the wall.  Another caution was to see that areas where new policies were being developed usually took up a lot of space.  In contrast it was easy to fall into the trap of taking existing guiding policies for granted.  When these came up, they too were included on the wall.

It took another couple of days to work through the guiding principles.  One feature of this was the testing of consistency and congruence of these policies by the team as they worked through the options and developed the policies.  Was it congruent to offer products as well as being an expert based business?  Was the website policy consistent with the revenue model?   How would recent leads and current clients, take to this story?  Were the executive team happy with the overall consistency?  Could we implement it?  Would it actually address the situation analysis?

Throughout this time, ideas were being dropped into the “Coherent actions” areas.  However these were only visited once the guiding principles were complete.  At this stage the analysis of each situation and the guiding principles designed to address those areas and focus resources were written up in a four page plan.  Remarkably short and concise, as guiding principles should be.  The team were also asked to go out and talk to people about the guiding principles and positioning they were now adopting, with people who were safe, trusted associates.  This was a deliberate ploy to  help the team members practice telling the story, to develop how they would tell the story in a smooth and convincing manner, and to test how convincing they were.

By this time it was clear we had what would traditionally be called a vision and mission.  However , it was not the usual glib statement of a vision, but one that had much more substance in the minds of the  team.

Once this was complete, the coherent actions where addressed using a time line and structuring the main tasks against the guiding principles.

It was only at this point that we developed a more detailed tangible future, a time line of actions, a strategy map and the more detailed plan that each member of the team adopted part of.

Overall it was a thought provoking experience.  I would use Richard Rumelt’s approach again.  Especially where the team need an expansive thing and even need to stop doing what they have always done. It has the advantage of opening up the questioning and diagnosis to a wider set of questions than any specific strategy analysis tool  normally develops.  Also, the concise, yet powerful guiding principles provide an excellent point of reference when working on any aspect of the strategy, for instance is the website approach consistent with the positioning and sales policies?  If PR is our preferred channel for influencing the market where do we choose that is consistent with our policy on clients?

So, overall a very satisfying experience as a facilitator and consultant.  Also a very effective tool as a client.   Good strategy bad strategy has a lot going for it as a tool as well as being a good thought provoking read.