Are you...

Interested in Strategy maps and strategy mapping? Need to explain your strategy better? Want to modernise or upgrade your balanced scorecard? Trying to be more strategic, so you can see the wood from the trees? Or do you simply want to ensure you deliver your strategy reliably?

Whether you are an Executive, Manager or Practitioner, you are in the right place...

What you will learn here...

Here we summarise the main benefits of strategy maps, explain what strategy maps are and how they relate to balanced scorecards. We describe the problems they solve and show how strategy maps improve the design and effectiveness of balanced scorecards when managing both strategy and performance. We touch on Public sector and NFP applications as well as commercial uses. You can also learn how to avoid some of the common mistakes people make when designing and implementing strategy maps in their organisations.

Strategy Mapping for Learning Organizations"
With a Foreword by David Norton. Author, Phil Jones

(Published by Gower, December 2011).

David Norton, in the Foreword, says:

"This book is a 'drivers manual' for anyone who is implementing a Balanced Scorecard performance management system. [...] it is required reading."

"...the work of Phil Jones makes a unique contribution to the field of performance management."

Want to know more?
To read David Norton's foreword in full, to get more details, or to find out how to buy "Strategy Mapping...", simply click on the cover or this link.

Strategy maps capture and communicate your strategy

Strategy maps help you ensure your strategy will be more successful, because they help you capture, communicate and manage your strategy better. Strategy maps capture your management team's thinking in a rich manner so it is easy to communicate. Strategy maps explain how the strategy will bring about change: they help you avoid "Strategy by Hope and Magic".

If your staff don't get the strategy, that could make a big difference. When a client used the phrase, ‘A piece of the strategy in everybody’s pocket’ I knew exactly what he meant.  Because Strategy maps are a rich and succinct picture of an organization’s strategy they are a powerful tool of communication.  I know many clients who have carried their strategy maps around to explain their strategy.  Others have kept a large version on their wall, or the office wall, so that the whole organization can see what needs to be achieved. They can see where they fit in and contribute.

Strategy maps help you manage performance better.

They help you manage the strategy rather than the operational detail that scorecards contain. They raise the level and quality of conversation amongst a management team. They can be used to discourage silo thinking and encourage joined up thinking and working.

If you want a more responsive adaptable organisation that recognises that the strategy will evolve as you implement it then Strategy maps, used as a part of an overall Strategic Learning process will help you. Because Strategy Maps are such a succinct tool for capturing strategy on a single page they are also more easily adapted and refined than traditional thick plans. They help you become an organisation that learns as it executed its strategy .

Strategy maps get you proper, modern strategic balanced scorecards.

If your balanced scorecard does not use a Strategy Map, then you do not have a proper Norton & Kaplan Balanced Scorecard. Without one, you have what Bob Kaplan describes as "An operational scorecard". With out a strategy map, your scorecard will remain an operational tool, rather than one of strategy communication and execution.

Strategy Maps are fundamental to the Norton & Kaplan approach: an approach to managing strategy and its execution successfully. Their use and role in balanced scorecard design is clearly set out in the second chapter of Norton & Kaplan's first book, "The Balanced Scorecard" (see pages 29-31), though they only got called Strategy maps later. It is odd that so many try to implement scorecards with out the insights and focus that a strategy map provides.

Strategy maps raise the discussion from operations, to strategy

Strategy Maps are fundamental to the Balanced Scorecard as a tool of Strategic Management. They make the difference between an operational view and a strategic perspective. They raise the level of conversation from operational detail to strategy and change.

Strategy maps help you systematically design measures and align investments

Strategy maps sit above the scorecard to provide a structured description of the strategy and what drives performance. Strategy maps contain objectives, which are developed before measures are chosen. Using the objectives in a strategy map means that you will choose the most appropriate measures and targets in your scorecard. The objectives in strategy maps also help you align projects. By introducing strategy maps we have identified significant savings from the overall programme and projects portfolio. Do you want to systematically align your organisation?

A stepping stone to the benefits of fourth generation balanced scorecards

If you are using strategy maps you are starting to do third generation balanced scorecard thinking: Thinking that enables you to systematically manage your strategy and its execution. You also have in place an essential pre-requisite for fourth generation balanced scorecard thinking.

Avoid the outdated cruciform model for balanced scorecard design

Many of you will be familiar with this diagram that represents the earliest balanced scorecard model in "The Balanced Scorecard". It was discarded by Norton & Kaplan but, unfortunately, it is all over the internet. It is an early balanced scorecard framework which dates back to 1992 when balanced scorecard perspectives were first developed. It is described on page 9 of Norton & Kaplan's first book as a framework that shows how the perspectives support the strategy and vision.

It has always been about cause and effect and strategy maps

However, read page 30 of the very same book "The Balanced Scorecard" and it explains that this diagram is merely a framework to show how they relate to strategy. What really matters is the cause and effect between perspectives: the relationship that forms the strategy map. This old cruciform framework was discarded as a model of balanced scorecards by Norton and Kaplan as early as 1995. The strategy map cause and effect framework, with the perspectives stacked on top of each other, and clear relations between them, is the one you need.

Solving these problems by discarding the old model

Why was it discarded? It merely describes how the perspectives link to strategy. Nothing else. The arrows have no meaning, it has no cause and effect model that drives performance, it encourages collecting measures in perspectives, it is difficult to cascade and leads to measure mania where lots of measures are collected and categorised without any real structure or purpose. It leads to operational balanced scorecards that contain potentially hundreds of measures. Ultimately this approach creates a culture of measurement rather than performance.

The strategy map model which replaced this solves all of these problems. Using the strategy map framework, instead of this cruciform model, will dramatically improve the effect of your balanced scorecard and make it a much more useful as a tool of strategy, communication and change.

Our view is that Norton & Kaplan's book Strategy Maps, (which was published in 2004) was a plea for people to understand the importance of Strategy Maps in the whole Balanced Scorecard approach. A role that many had missed from the earlier books, "The Balanced Scorecard" and "The Strategy focused Organization".

Isn't it about time you updated your balanced scorecard?

A Strategy Map is a pictorial representation of the strategy. It describes the strategy and tells the story of the strategy. It describes visually how value is to be created by the organisation and what will drive change. (Figure 1 shows the structure of a Strategy Map alongside a theme from a Strategy Map )

Strategy maps are part of the overall Balanced Scorecard Management Approach. A Strategy Map sits in front of its their balanced scorecard (the scorecard). Each Scorecard has a strategy map. Rather, each strategy map has a scorecard behind it.

A Strategy Map contains the answer to the question, "What do you want to accomplish." A strategy map does not contain measures, it contains objectives. This simplifies the selection of measures in the balanced scorecard. Strategy maps instill the discipline of "Objectives before Measures".

A Strategy Map contains objectives that are linked in a cause and effect relationship. The cause and effect relationship is described between objectives in perspectives. Those perspectives are the four main perspectives of the balanced scorecard approach, which describe the cause and effect relationship. The scorecard components (Objectives, measures, targets, initiatives, assessments, responsibility) sit behind the objectives on the strategy map.

A Strategy Map is developed from the perspective of a single management team. Each management team will have their own strategy map which describes their part of the strategy. So each Strategy Map tells the story of the strategy from the perspective of that management team. If you create one for the organisation's Executive team, it will represent the overall organisation's strategy, from their perspective.

As each management team has their own Strategy Map, this creates a cascade of strategy maps as the strategy is cascaded through the organisation. Each strategy map representing that management team's contribution to the overall strategy and what they have to achieve.

Strategy Maps are unique to that organisation. It represents their strategy. For this reason they should not be copied, unless you intend to also copy that organisation's strategy.

A Strategy map is about focus and choice. A strategy map for a management team contains the few things that that team have to focus on to make the biggest difference. For this reason, Strategy Maps are not operational maps: They do not contain everything. They contain the few objectives that are most important and that describe the cause and effect relationship. This means you have to ask the right questions about what drives performance, in the right order when developing a Strategy map.

A Strategy map is about change. If the objectives in the lower perspectives are achieved this should ripple through to improvements in the objectives in the higher perspectives. (See diagram). This is the cause and effect relationship working.

A strategy map is often be divided into strategic themes. These are vertical slices across the perspectives that describes value creating aspects of the strategy. A Strategy Map may contain multiple strategic themes.

In the Fourth Generation Balanced Scorecard we add additional perspectives, whilst preserving the central cause and effect relationship. This includes the organisation's values, the demands of regulators, the need for objectives representing social and environmental impact and the need to monitor the external environment.

A Strategy Map is used to review progress against the strategy. It supports the Strategic Management process. The scorecard part of the Balanced Scorecard approach is used to review operational progress: the Operational Management process. The two work together.

Strategy Maps used to review progress against the strategy. Is our strategy working? Do we need to change it or refine it? Strategy maps are not static tools. They are tools of management that get refined and developed as management learn from their strategy and the strategy evolves.

When management teams use strategy maps in their meetings the conversation rises to a highest level, there is less operational detail and more time spent reviewing whether the strategy is working or not, and why.

This also raises the heads of people in the organisation who are also then able to discuss, understand and contribute to the strategy so that it is more likely to be delivered.

This combination of thinking strategically and operationally is a fundamental part of our Fourth Generation Balanced Scorecard approach.

A Strategy map in a public sector or not for profit organisation provides the same benefits as one for a commercial organisation. It is also very similar, with one exception. The exception is that the outcome perspectives are arranged differently to reflect the challenge satisfying their community, economically, whilst serving regulators or politicians.

One particular advantage of using Strategy Maps with Public Sector Balanced scorecards is that they are much better than traditional public sector scorecards at capturing and explaining the more complex service delivery models and strategies that the public sector needs today. They enable you to articulate, far easier, how cost savings, policy change, and preventative measures affect operations and ultimately the population and finances. You can also show how preventative strategies applied at one part of the landscape (say changes to policing or health improvements, can ripple through to benefits further along the chain to benefit, say, the courts or acute hospitals.

We have a wide experience of Public sector, third sector and charity balanced scorecards, so contact us for more details.

1. Always design your strategy map before you think about your scorecard. Do not worry about measures: concentrate on objectives in the Strategy Map.


2. The creation of the strategy map is a process of conversation and exploration within a management team. Never try and short-cut this process.


3. Never use someone else's Strategy Map unless you are also using their strategy as well. Especially do not copy a Strategy Map from a book. Strategy maps need to be created by the management team that will use them so you have their ownership: So it reflects their thinking - not someone else's.


4. Never add additional perspectives if they destroy the cause and effect relationship. They are not categories of measures but part of a cause and effect relationship. Instead use a theme that crosses the existing perspectives.


5. Strategy maps are not operational maps. If you find yourself mapping the existing processes in detail you have probably gone down a rabbit hole.


6. As a minimum, you should be able to read in your strategy map: your business model; the customer's business model; how you will deliver value to your customer; and how you intend to change. If you can't, then you haven't captured your strategy, you won't communicate your strategy and it won't help you deliver it.

These are just a few tips to help you. We'll leave the last word to one of our clients:

"Only use Excitant if you are genuinely committed to the high level goals and
improved organisational capabilities of a strategy-driven organisation"
Ben Ticehurst, Deputy Chief Executive, Peterborough City Council

Learn more in
"Strategy Mapping for Learning Organizations"

As recommended by David Norton, the complete guide to developing using and managing with strategy map based balanced scorecards.

To improve your organisation's performance...
talk to us

Remember, strategy maps are a means to an end: delivering your strategy, engaging people and improving results.

We have been refining our approach since 1996 having helped a wide variety of organisations. We have some of the widest experience anywhere in the world.

To get the benefits in your organisation: talk to us.