Excitant > Our Point of View

Our point of view on the Management of Strategy
and Organisational Performance in organisations.

Over the years we have developed a point of view on the
Management of Strategy and Performance in organisations.

Strategy is a 'wicked' problem.

One of the problems with strategy formulation is that people resort to standard tools thinking that there is a solution to the question, "What should our strategy be?". In reality, Strategy is not like that. A strategy is choice based upon the best information available and subject to a whole set of assumptions, risks and uncertainties.

A chosen strategy is a solution to a challenge in a market or situation. It should be a persistent and congruent set of policies that guide actions. The alignment of the strategy is determined by the congruence and consistent of the actions, being taken to implement the strategy. For this reason we believe that...

Managing Strategy is a Learning Process.

If your strategy a choice there is the potential that it is wrong, or not entirely correct. Something you will only learn as you execute it. So the management of strategy is a learning process, learning from the execution and refining or adapting your strategy as you progress.

One challenge of leaders is to mitigate between the volatile, changing environment and the need for persistent practices, policies, processes and procedures within the organisation to maintain consistency and efficiency. So communication of your strategy is important. So we believe...

All plans should be burnt!

Strategy happens when your staff make decisions every moment of every day. If your strategy is in peoples' heads, then they are executing it, and all plans can be safely burnt. If it is not in their heads then it is a waste of time and might as well be burnt. So all plans should be burnt. This leads to...

It's about behaviours, Stupid!

Having worked in the Performance management and balanced scorecard space for over 15 years we have met many people who think it is about measures and targets. It is not.

In reality it is about the behaviours you create. The measures are important for control and targets can be a useful motivator, but what matters is that people do the right things in the right way. It is about behaviours. Which is why...

We want to put Human Beings back into Performance Management.

So much of performance management assumes we can manage organisations using measures. If it were true we could employ computers instead of experienced managers. We see this in measure mania, the tyranny of targets and silo thinking and working. KPIs and measures are not enough.

We want people to think when they come to work. That is how we get the best from them. Which is why we believe...

It is about judgement and evidence.

We pay people for their experience, and value it. Good decision making is a combination of judgement and evidence. So the question becomes how do we develop judgement, good judgement, in people, backed up with evidence. But how do we find out how people make judgements?

Quality of Conversation & Action.

It is about the quality of conversation, because quality of conversation, leads to better understanding and decision making, and quality of action. So the emphasis of our balanced scorecard work is improving the quality of decision making, team by team. Some of this is about having better information. Much is about a greater understanding of the objectives, situation, actions and behaviours. A properly designed fourth generation balanced scorecard will help with this.

However...

Most balanced scorecards are not Balanced Scorecards.

One of the biggest problems with most balanced scorecards is that they are not Balanced Scorecards. They fail to describe strategy, improve decision making or focus on change. It has become a generic term for a set of measures, rather than truly a tool of strategy execution and implementation. There are some basic tests of a simple Balanced Scorecard in our resources area.

These are all basics that were developed back in the 1990s. Yes really. Since then the approach has developed much further.. Hence...

The need for Fourth Generation Balanced Scorecard thinking.

Learn more about managing strategy , people and organisations in changing environments...

You can find out more about our approach in our research and our manifesto...

...but, if you are really interested in improving how your organisation
manages its strategy and performance, talk to us