Managing Uncertainty and Risk in a Changing Environment.
How the Modern Balanced Scorecard approach helps

Excitant > Case studies and examples > Managing Uncertainty & Risk: Fourth Generation Balanced Scorecard Case Studies

Keywords Techniques: Future thinking, Strategy formulation, Fourth Generation balanced scorecards, Tangible Future, Developing Management Consensus, anticipating uncertainty and risks.

Keywords Application: Uncertain and changing external environments, City Council balanced scorecard, Manufacturing Company balanced scorecard, Management team meetings, monitoring the external environment.

This paper provides two contrasting case studies for the future thinking stage of modern balanced scorecard development.

One provides a fifteen year view from the perspective of a city council. The other provides a five year view of a manufacturing company's market. Both use a detailed picture of the future (Tangible Future) to build a common understanding amongst the management team before setting the rate of ambition for the strategy, strategy map and balanced scorecard.

This is first case study is typical of third generation balanced scorecards using what sometimes gets called a destination statement or future statement.

In the second, case study, the Tangible Future is also used to identify the assumptions and uncertainties in the environment and market. This expanded the management team's balanced scorecard, so they could monitor the external environment, to ensure their strategy was still appropriate, as their strategy was implemented. This is a part of Excitant’s Fourth Generation Balanced Scorecard approach.

Using a Tangible Future: Two contrasting case studies.