« When Did Strategy Become a Four Letter Word? | Main | Why Focusing on Your Target Customer and Defining Your Value Proposition Isn’t Enough for Business Success »

10/11/2011

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Thetwpodcast

Doing a little research into balanced scorecards and came across this blog post. Interestingly if you look at the latest Bain graph the usage has dropped right down to around 38% in 2012.

Edneal

I agree, the use of BSC will never go out of date. All it needs is putting the right ingredient in order to work for a given organization.

Kathleen

as far as i know, it will never go out of date. :)

Frances

I think the balanced scorecard concept is not out of date... what might have been passed by time is the kind of balanced scorecard template we are using in the organization. It's all about making the necessary additions and adjustments into it so it can keep up with the changing times.

Sandy Richardson

Hi George - you comments about the capacity required to implement and maintain the BSC in an organization are very important. It is critical for success that some resources are applied to the BSC and the strategy management process, however, I think that many organizations go too far at times in this regard. When I was overseeing the BSC in a national organization of 1200 employees, I was able to manage BSC and strategy activities myself. In fact, these activities only took 50% of my time. However, we did involve a large network of employees to supply data and commentary to the BSC. By selecting contributors intelligently (i.e. we chose people who's role was a natural fit with the data or results we were asking them to comment on), the drain on our organizational capacity wasn't excessive. Also, we involved a large number of individuals in the process so most people were contributing to, on average, 1 or 2 indicators maximum, on a regular basis.

Many organizations seek to mitigate capacity drains by automating their BSC but, in my experience, some manual intervention by employees is required.

So, as you point out, organizations must be prepared to assign some resources to the BSC and need to realize that there will be some imapct on capacity but by keeping the BSC simple and the indicator numbers manageable, the potential capacity drain can be and should be contained.

George Veth

I like the comments above but I'd like to add a dimension to the discussion- the OVERHEAD involved with implementing and maintaining the BSC (time,effort, infrastructure). I think that the concepts are great and I love the constructs - like the Strategy Map. However, the ability to cascade the BSC and to keep the information quasi updated is simply a daunting task.

It is my opinion that the methodology needs to be deconstructed and streamlined for the increasing volatility and change that the current business environment demands. It was also be good to consider how emergent strategic themes play into the methodology.

Great topic! - thanks for the post. Hope to benefit from this type of questioning on our new site at www.adaptableorg.com.

Genepease7

Using metrics from a scorecard are a good start on the road to analytics. You are able to monitor changes over a period of time; however, by utilizing only the scorecards companies will run into serious problems when making major decisions since the scorecard metrics are correlations. By going further and using analytics, these companies can get to the cause and effect of an investment in isolation of all the other variables that also maybe influencing the outcome. Done right, you can also begin to predict with great accuracy (or significantly reduce the error rate) of future investments, thus optimizing your HR investments.

Gene Pease
Capital Analytics, Inc.
www.capanalytics.com

Sandy Richardson

Hi Greg: Thank you for your comments. I have seen some successful organizations integrate their balanced scorecard into their employee performance management framework very well - the BSC became the organizing framework for PM. This is just another important step in building employee engagement and making the business strategy the way your company works every day. Sandy

Greg Schott

Sandy,

I believe that the BSC continues to have great relevance today. I would like to see its use expanded to replace performance reviews with a link to the BSC that enhances employee engagement.

Thanks for presenting the BSC case so clearly.

Sandy Richardson

Hi Sujata: thank you for your comments - I'm glad you agree and hope that you are using the BSC exactly in this way! Sandy

Sujata

Sandy-
I agree with your views. The balanced score card needs to be used in conjunction with the strategy and tactical objectives, operational initiatives and support structure to manage the business rather than just as a reporting tool.

Thanks for sharing
Sujata

The comments to this entry are closed.