Balanced Scorecard Overview (Part 1)
In anticipation of the annual ASP Conference being held next week in San Diego, I wanted to dive into the Balanced Scorecard and how it is being used as a Strategic Management System. At this year’s conference, there are two different breakout sessions dedicated to the Balanced Scorecard, indicating that the Balanced Scorecard has grown in acceptance in the community and can now be counted among the most influential tools in business strategy.
Here are the descriptions of the two Balanced Scorecard breakout sessions:
1) Effective Strategy Formulation, Planning and Management Using the Balanced Scorecard
Howard Rohm, President & CEO, Balanced Scorecard Institute
Successful scorecard systems are built, implemented, and sustained by paying attention to five guiding principles. First, organize the scorecard effort like it’s a marathon race, making sure the system fits the culture of the organization; second, build down from a shared vision of the future; third, craft the strategic story on how the organization creates value for customers and stakeholders and develop a strategy map; fourth, measure what matters strategically, and fifth, make strategy actionable for everyone in the organization. Presentation take-aways from this session include:
• Understand how you can apply best practices to your scorecard initiative
• Learn how to build employee buy-in to the new system
• Learn how to incorporate customer and stakeholder needs in strategy and system development
• Learn how to use a disciplined framework, customized for your organization, to build your scorecard
• Learn how to overcome challenges and sustain your scorecard system for the long-term
2) The Balanced Scorecard
Gerald Taylor, President & Managing Consultant, The Performance Management Group LLC
The Balanced Scorecard presentation is an overview designed for those who wish to understand the basic principles and applications of the balanced scorecard as a tool in a company’s strategic management system.
As a result of the overview, each audience member will be able to answer the following questions:
1. What is the Balanced Scorecard?
2. What is the value of implementing the Balanced Scorecard?
3. What is the most feasible approach to implementing the Balanced Scorecard?
4. How would a company go about implementing a Balanced Scorecard?
Moreover, the audience will learn the elements of how to create an overall company vision that is tangible and fits with the prevailing company strategy. The audience will also learn how to define specific and distinct departmental mission statements that articulate directly into the overall company vision.
Part of the presentation will consist of an overview of strategy mapping. It will focus on:
1. Establishing company critical success factors.
2. Defining executive level scorecards and related strategic objectives.
3. Translating strategic objectives into mid and manager level scorecards.
4. Articulating scorecards into operational goals and objectives.
5. Tie and link operational goals with each employee function.
In the next couple days I will try to address Mr. Taylor’s first four questions above and I may dive into Strategy Maps and other topics at a later date. In the mean time, here are some links and resources for your own exploration:
Links: Balanced Scorecard Institute, Articles and Whitepapers, Balanced Scorecard on Wikipedia
Tags:asp conference,Association of Strategic Planning,Balanced Scorecard,best practices,business strategy










