from March 1, 2010
Many of us have been riveted over the past 17 days watching athletes compete at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. If you’re like me, you have found yourself feeling inspired by their dedication, focus, struggles, and love of what they are doing. I have also found myself wondering how I can translate that spirit into my own life.
While some of us will take the opportunity to emulate our Olympians and channel our energies into the sports we participate in, are the rest of us non-athletic types simply out of luck? My answer is no. I believe that we can all apply the key attributes we saw in our athletes in our workplaces and work lives.
Furthermore, I believe that strategy maps and the balanced scorecard are important tools that our organizations can leverage to achieve the successes we are looking for.
Here are the five things you and your organization can do to perform like an Olympian:
1. Define a clear goal to work towards and focus on the most critical things that will lead to your ultimate goal.
All athletes do this. They define their vision of success - whether it is to perform at their personal best at a specific competition, to execute the best turns at all times this year, or to win a place on the national team - and then they determine the most important things they need to have in place and focus on to achieve their goal. This might include such things as the best equipment, access to a great coach, the support of a sports psychologist, a state of the art training plan, etc. Their journey to success always includes an outline of what it takes to achieve their goal and a prioritized execution plan to get there.
You can use a strategy map to do exactly this same thing in your organization. A strategy map includes a statement of your organization’s ultimate goal (your mission and vision), an outline of the vital few attributes that will get your organization to your goal (in the form of strategic objectives) and your key areas of focus for execution over a period of time (strategy map weighting).
2. Establish measures that will allow you to assess progress towards goals. Don’t just focus on outcome measures - use process measures that will help predict and improve the likelihood of achieving desired results.
Once the plan for goal achievement has been established, athletes and their coaches will define the key measures that will help them keep track of progress towards their ultimate goal. The secret to their success, however, is that they don’t just measure success with performance outcomes (such as training times at race distances and competition results) - they also measure performance on elements that contribute to great outcomes such as oxygen capacity, agility, strength levels, flexibility, etc. Measuring (and improving) current performance on these process-based or predictive indicators usually enhances the achievement of great performance outcomes.
In organizations, we can use the balanced scorecard to help us measure and manage for mission and vision achievement. When you select indicators that are the most representative of the strategic objectives on your strategy map and remember to use an indicator set that includes a balance of outcome and predictor indicators, your organization is in the best position to leverage this powerful measurement and management tool for the achievement of your ultimate goal.
3. Measure actual performance against targets at regular intervals to get the best, most current feedback about performance and progress. Athletes and their coaches don’t stop at collecting data on actual performance – they set performance targets and then analyze actual performance against these targets. This is the only way to assess how training is going and whether positive progress is being made towards goals. They will use a variety of techniques for setting these targets and most of the time they will vary and stretch over time and/or based on the training cycle. In addition, athletes and coaches will collect data points at regular intervals at a frequency that makes sense in relation to their plan for goal achievement. The key is to have accurate, relevant, and current information about performance against targets at hand when it is needed.
Your balanced scorecard must take a similar approach to results assessment. Be sure to measure actual performance against targets and/or performance benchmarks. Take a reasoned approach to setting targets and be prepared to invest as required if setting stretch targets. The bottom line is to set targets that will help your organization improve and progress as required to achieve the ultimate goal. Finally, measure performance at a frequency that makes sense for the indicator and your organization and strive to streamline the data collection process so that results are available on a timely basis, as close to the end of the performance measurement period as possible.
4. When performance is under target, ensure sustainable performance improvement by investigating, and then correcting, root cause problems in a cross-functional team environment.
When a measure of athletic performance is showing results below target, athletes, their coaches, and their team will investigate further to determine the root cause for these performance results. It might be fatigue from overtraining, dehydration from poor nutrition, injury, poor technique, etc. Whatever the determination, plans will be put in place to solve and eliminate the root of the problem. This is the only path to sustained improvements in performance. However, these corrective plans will be made in consultation with the team to help minimize the risk of a negative impact on another area of the athlete’s performance.
Balanced scorecard indicator performance must be investigated thoroughly to identify and them eliminate systemic root cause problems in your organization. However, it is important to realize that, like an athlete, their coach, and their support team, your organization is a system with many moving parts. Successful organizational performance demands that all of these moving parts working together seamlessly. Changes, in the form of corrective action plans, can throw the other parts of your organization off so it is important that root cause problems and their solutions be discussed as a cross-functional team before they are implemented. Your balanced scorecard results review meeting offers a great forum for these discussions.
Taking this approach helps minimize the creation of new root cause problems in other parts of your organization and/or allows other parts of your organization to change what they are doing as required to keep the entire system balanced and working together well.
5. Assess results to learn about your successes and mistakes, evaluate progress with goal achievement, and adjust your goals, targets, and/or action plans as required. Making your journey towards your ultimate goal DYNAMIC is the best bet for achieving success!
Athletes use data from their training sessions and competition performance to assess their progress towards their ultimate goal. They learn from both their successes and mistakes and use this information to assess whether their plan is the right one to achieve their ultimate objective. Based on this assessment, goals, performance targets, corrective action plans, and training plans will be adjusted. Sometimes, often when unforeseen circumstances arise, the ultimate goal will also have to be adjusted. The bottom line is that to ensure the greatest chance of success, an athlete’s journey to their ultimate goal must be a dynamic learning process that is open to change in course based on a combination of facts, information, and knowledge.
To truly leverage the power of their balanced scorecard, all organizations should be using it as a dynamic strategy management tool. This means leveraging balanced scorecard results data, commentary information, and corrective action plan result to answer five key questions: How have our strategic objectives been performing over the past quarter?; What are the implications for strategy execution?; Are we moving forward?; What are our key strategic issues?; Are any changes in direction required (objectives, relationships, strategy)? The result is strategic learnings and new knowledge that facilitate the required adjustments that will lead to organizational success.
Olympic athletes and their coaches have many moving parts to manage as they strive to achieve success. It’s not that different for those of us in the business world. Why not leverage the inspiration and example provided by Olympians and use the five keys to athletic success within your organization - be it a company, a business unit, department, or team - to achieve your goals for business success!
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