What we do that you won't find
in the balanced scorecard books
The question
Between 1995 and 2000, our MD worked for Norton
& Kaplan. In 1996, when he asked Professor Robert Kaplan,
"Why did you publish the "Balanced Scorecard"
book and give so much away to for other consultancies to use?"
His reply:
"It's not an issue, it was 18
month old consulting by the time it
was published"
He was right. Here we highlight just some of
the key pieces that we use with clients, that were either never
put in the books, or are under-represented and under-explained.
Some aspects that you won't find well covered in the books
The ownership and consensus process:
The books put emphasis on this but don't explain how to get it,
reliably. You want management team agreement. How
do you elicit from senior managers, their individual views on
the strategy, objectives, the causality and what drives it?
Then, how do you reconcile the diverse views and and get them
all to agree it? You want your management team telling the
same story, don't you?
Organisational values:
Almost every organisation has them, yet they do not feature
in the books. How do you represent the core values of an
organisation on strategy maps and scorecards?
Stakeholders and suppliers:
Some people argue, through misunderstanding, that the Balanced
scorecard only represents customers. Of course, it can represent
other stakeholders: from Government to suppliers; from employees
to part owners; from patients and community groups to volunteers
and donors. Where they are important, they can be represented.
Management team dynamics:
You have spent time getting focus on your strategy map and scorecard,
yet management team meetings still run on discussing detail.
How to change your management team meetings to have that longer
term focus, yet so they still have confidence that they are controlling
and managing the business today.
Strategic themes:
How to represent, develop and refine the themes of your strategy.
How to represent tensions in your strategy. How to create
a balance between completing the existing strategy and developing
an emerging one. How themes can be designed around different
purposes creating different styles of strategy map with different
effects.
Communicating your strategy effectively:
The Balanced Scorecard approach, used fully, dramatically increases
the understanding of strategy in organisations. One survey
cites increases from 5% to 60%. There are specific parts of the
approach designed to deliver this. It relies on an understanding
of the different patterns of thinking that people have.
Taking shortcuts, and measure focused scorecards, miss this entirely.
If you want to touch everyone in the organisation, so they get
a feel for the strategy and see their role within it, then talk
with us.
How to present the strategy in 10 minutes:
Our clients can present their strategy in 5-10 minutes in a compelling
and detailed way. I've seen 5 directors explain their parts
of the strategy to over 50 managers in less than an hour and the
audience demonstrate real understanding and input into that thinking.
Wouldn't you like to be able to do that?
Refining and updating strategy maps and scorecards:
So you have built it. Now you have to maintain it. How
do you know when to change the targets, measures, initiatives,
objectives or the strategy as a whole?
Linking budgets and balanced scorecards:
The budgeting process is a key controlling process in most organisations.
If you ignore the links, your scorecard and strategy are likely
to die quickly.
Linking rolling budgets and strategy:
How to link your strategy map and scorecard to a rolling budgeting
process.
Linking scenario planning and the strategy
map:
How future thinking and scenario planning help you to create
forward-looking strategy maps. Further, how you use this
to know when to trigger updates to the strategy maps.
The solution
If you are struggling with any of these issues, or others, we
will be happy to bring our experience to bear.
For a FREE confidential discussion, Contact
us
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