Packed with Knowledge!, 30 Jun 2005
First published in 1996, this management literature classic builds a bridge between traditional, short-term oriented management systems and a more balanced approach integrating new types of measurements into a comprehensive strategy. This book looks senior managers in the eye and asks, "Are you ready for the future?" Some executives respond to the challenge of change by tinkering, adding a few nonfinancial metrics to the "instrumentation cockpit" that tells them how their corporate ship is running. Others have spurned Balanced Scorecard because it requires CEOs to accept feedback from all levels of their organizations so they will know if their assumptions remain relevant amidst rapid change. To date, however, more than 300 major organizations have used this system to enhance their performance, and future prospects. Abraham Lincoln once said that the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. With apologies to Lincoln, we recommend this book to all senior executives and managers - because the future will be here sooner than you think.

Overcome Poor Communications and Bureaucracy for New Actions, 28 May 2004
The Balanced Scorecard looks at the important issues of alignment, coordination, and effective implementation. Most business thinkers like to start with the big picture, and end there. As a result, most ideas for going in a new direction are quickly diluted by misunderstanding, falling back on old habits, and lethargy. Since Peter Drucker first popularized the idea of business strategy, there have been vastly more strategies conceived than there have been strategies successfully implemented as a result. Much attention has been paid to devising better strategies in the last four decades, and little to implementing strategies. The big pay-off is in the implementation, and The Balanced Scorecard is one of handful of books that provide important and valuable guidance to explain what needs to be done to successfully execute strategy. You must have more measures, and different measures than the accounting system provides. You also need to link measures and compensation to the key tasks that each person must perform. This book is simply the Rosetta Stone of communicating and managing strategy. The Balanced Scorecard is the beginning of the practical period of maturity in the field of business strategy. Read this book today to enjoy much more prosperity! I also recommend that you read The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Handbook, and The Dance of Change to understand more about the context in which you are trying to make positive change. These four books are excellent companions for each other.

The series of books about The Balanced Scorecard includes The Strategy-Focused Organization and Strategy Maps. You'll love all three!

The text that brought performance measurement to the fore, 04 Jun 2002
One of the classic texts of the 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard has brought the importance of performance measurement to a generation of managers. It's still a worthwhile read, although more recent models, like the Performance Prism by Neely, seem much broader in scope.

A big disappointment, 01 Sep 1999
This book does not deliver on the expectations built by the initial Balanced Scorecard articles. It does very little to clarify and structure the concept and approach to building a Balanced Scorecard. There are a few interesting ideas but they get lost in a repetitive and hard to read text.

Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants, 11 Jul 1999
A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.

In their previous book, The Balanced Scorecard, Robert Kaplan and David Norton unveiled an innovative "performance management system" that any company could use to focus and align their executive teams, business units, human resources, information technology and financial resources on a unified overall strategy--much like businesses have traditionally employed financial management systems to track and guide their general fiscal direction. In The Strategy-focused Organisation, Kaplan and Norton explain how companies like Mobil, CIGNA and Chemical Retail Bank have effectively used this approach for nearly a decade, and in the process present a step-by-step implementation outline that other organizations could use to attain similar results. Their book is divided into five sections that guide readers through the development of a completely individualised plan created with "strategy maps" (graphical representations designed to clearly communicate desired outcomes and how they are to be achieved), then infused throughout the enterprise and made an integral part of its future. In several chapters, for example, the authors show how their models have linked long-term strategy with day-to-day operational and budgetary management, and detail the "double loop" process for doing so, monitoring progress, and initiating corrective actions if necessary. --Howard Rothman

Packed with Knowledge!, 30 Jun 2005
First published in 1996, this management literature classic builds a bridge between traditional, short-term oriented management systems and a more balanced approach integrating new types of measurements into a comprehensive strategy. This book looks senior managers in the eye and asks, "Are you ready for the future?" Some executives respond to the challenge of change by tinkering, adding a few nonfinancial metrics to the "instrumentation cockpit" that tells them how their corporate ship is running. Others have spurned Balanced Scorecard because it requires CEOs to accept feedback from all levels of their organizations so they will know if their assumptions remain relevant amidst rapid change. To date, however, more than 300 major organizations have used this system to enhance their performance, and future prospects. Abraham Lincoln once said that the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. With apologies to Lincoln, we recommend this book to all senior executives and managers - because the future will be here sooner than you think.

Overcome Poor Communications and Bureaucracy for New Actions, 28 May 2004
The Balanced Scorecard looks at the important issues of alignment, coordination, and effective implementation. Most business thinkers like to start with the big picture, and end there. As a result, most ideas for going in a new direction are quickly diluted by misunderstanding, falling back on old habits, and lethargy. Since Peter Drucker first popularized the idea of business strategy, there have been vastly more strategies conceived than there have been strategies successfully implemented as a result. Much attention has been paid to devising better strategies in the last four decades, and little to implementing strategies. The big pay-off is in the implementation, and The Balanced Scorecard is one of handful of books that provide important and valuable guidance to explain what needs to be done to successfully execute strategy. You must have more measures, and different measures than the accounting system provides. You also need to link measures and compensation to the key tasks that each person must perform. This book is simply the Rosetta Stone of communicating and managing strategy. The Balanced Scorecard is the beginning of the practical period of maturity in the field of business strategy. Read this book today to enjoy much more prosperity! I also recommend that you read The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Handbook, and The Dance of Change to understand more about the context in which you are trying to make positive change. These four books are excellent companions for each other.

The series of books about The Balanced Scorecard includes The Strategy-Focused Organization and Strategy Maps. You'll love all three!

The text that brought performance measurement to the fore, 04 Jun 2002
One of the classic texts of the 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard has brought the importance of performance measurement to a generation of managers. It's still a worthwhile read, although more recent models, like the Performance Prism by Neely, seem much broader in scope.

A big disappointment, 01 Sep 1999
This book does not deliver on the expectations built by the initial Balanced Scorecard articles. It does very little to clarify and structure the concept and approach to building a Balanced Scorecard. There are a few interesting ideas but they get lost in a repetitive and hard to read text.

Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants, 11 Jul 1999
A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.

The Perilous "Journey" to Breakthrough Performance, 25 Jul 2006

If you have not already read Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scoreboard, I presume to suggest that you do so prior to reading this book. However, this sequel is so thoughtful and well-written that it can certainly be of substantial value to decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) which is determined to "thrive in the new business environment." Research data suggest that only 5% of the workforce understand their company's strategy, that only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy, that 60% of organizations don't link budgets to strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy. These and other research findings help to explain why Kaplan and Norton believe so strongly in the power of the Balanced Scorecard. As they suggest, it provides "the central organizing framework for important managerial processes such as individual and team goal setting, compensation, resource allocation, budgeting and planning, and strategic feedback and learning." After rigorous and extensive research of their own, obtained while working closely with several dozen different organizations, Kaplan and Norton observed five common principles of a Strategy-Focused Organization:

1. Translate the strategy to operational terms

2. Align the organization to the strategy

3. Make strategy everyone's job

4. Make strategy a continual process

5. Mobilize change through executive leadership

The first four principles focus on the the Balanced Scorecard tool, framework, and supporting resources; the importance of the fifth principle is self-evident. "With a Balanced Scorecard that tells the story of the strategy, we now have a reliable foundation for the design of a management system to create Strategy-Focused Organizations."

After two introductory chapters, the material is carefully organized and developed within five Parts, each of which examines in detail one of the aforementioned "common principles": Translating the Strategy to Operational Terms, Aligning the Organization to Create Synergies, Making Strategy Everyone's Job, Making Strategy a Continual Process, and finally, Mobilizing Change Through Executive Leadership. Kaplan and Norton then provide a "Frequently Asked Questions" section which some readers may wish to consult first.

There are many pitfalls to be avoided when designing, launching, and implementing the program which Kaplan and Norton present. These pitfalls include lack of senior management commitment, too few individuals involved [or including inappropriate individuals at the outset], keeping the scoreboard at the top, too long a development process (when, in fact, the Balanced Scorecard is a one-time measurement process), treating the Balanced Scorecard as an [isolated] systems project, hiring consultants lacking sufficient experience with a Balanced Scorecard, and introducing the Balanced Scorecard only for compensation. When organizations experience one or more of these pitfalls, their key executives can soon become impatient, confused, frustrated, and ultimately, opposed to Balanced Scorecard initiatives. It is imperative to understand both what the Balanced Scorecard must be (e.g. cohesive and comprehensive) and what it must not be (e.g. fragmented and episodic). Kaplan and Norton correctly note that the journey they propose "is not easy or short. It requires commitment and perseverance. It requires teamwork and integration across traditional organizational boundaries and roles. The message must be reinforced often and in many ways." Those who are determined to achieve organization-wide breakthrough performance are fortunate to have Kaplan and Norton as companions every step of the way during what is indeed a perilous "journey."

Best Practices in Organizational Communication, 23 Aug 2004
The Strategy-Focused Organization clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the ten most important business books of the past ten years. The book successfully outlines an enormous improvement in communications practices for making important changes in for profit and nonprofit organizations. The communications stall is the most prevalent one in most organizations. Application of the authors' ideas can bring about a significant improvement in our society.

This book is an interim report on the application of the authors' concept, the Balanced Scorecard (introduced in 1992 and described in the book of the same name, published in 1996). The purpose of the book is to provide "a roadmap for those who wish to create their own Strategy-Focused Organization . . . [by employing the Balanced Scorecard]."

If you don't know what the Balanced Scorecard is, let me briefly describe it for you. A Balanced Scorecard adds several important measures to the ones normally found in the accounting system, designed to measure those areas where performance most directly and powerfully affects strategic position. Such areas include innovation, organizational learning, effectiveness in key tasks, and performance with key audiences like customers. The measures are chosen to reflect the systematic effects of how the organization's overall value and performance are improved, and are displayed in a Strategy Map that communicates those ideas to one and all. In doing so, the Balanced Scorecard is the applied solution to many of the issues raised about how to establish a learning organization in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

Most new business concepts do not last long enough to warrant a study on their effectiveness. The ones that do, like reengineering a few years ago, usually display more problems than successes. The Balanced Scorecard concept is the exception. The results have been very positive for almost all those who have employed it.

The key seems to lie in having everyone in the organization have a more complete understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. As such, the authors have actually uncovered something much more significant than a strategy communications process. Harvard Business School Professor and accounting guru (Activity-Based Costing) Bob Kaplan and consultant David Norton have uncovered a best practice in how to communicate any important message in an organization. Although the book does not address that latter point, discerning readers will quickly spot it.
Presumably the authors will too at some point, and a future book will begin to address this important application.

The focus of this book is on how Balanced Scorecard companies used that resource to implement new strategies. The finding is that with the Balanced Scorecard, nonlinear success usually followed. This is quite remarkable because organizations have reported in the past that implementing new strategies is one of the most difficult tasks they ever take on. Studies cited by the authors point to one problem being that most people in the organization are never clear on what the new strategy is. So if careful coordination and purposeful change are required, the speeding relay team may instead drop the baton along the way.

The Balanced Scorecard provides for a fundamental strategic control mechanism in the same way that the budget provides an operational control. The Balanced Scorecard is at the center of the organization's business planning, getting feedback to improve learning about how to proceed and then translating the organization's vision for each employee. This feedback is critical because most initial concepts for strategy are flawed in fundamental ways. As the authors point out, strategies should be treated as hypotheses, rather than as commandments written permanently in stone. Only by uncovering those flaws and correcting them does a new strategy have a good chance of succeeding.

The book features a lot of case histories that explain what the most successful organizations have done to apply the Balanced Scorecard. These are particularly valuable for making the key elements of the Balanced Scorecard clearer. For example, the book contains many pages of Strategy Maps for different organizations. These maps connect financial, customer, internal process, and learning objectives in an explicit description of how improvement in each area is connected to each other one, and to the organization's overall objectives. Without these detailed examples, it would be very hard to grasp the heart of the communications process involved here.

These financial and nonfinancial metrics can then be used to create personal objectives for each person in the organization for contributing to the ultimate success. Management by objectives measures and compensation systems can be connected to the new strategy in this way.

The research emphasizes several important themes: (1) Translate the strategy into operational terms (2) Align the organization to create necessary synergies (3) Make strategic initiatives everyone's everyday job (4) Make strategy a continuing process (5) Mobilize change through executive leadership.

I especially found the surveys helpful for describing what was different about the effectiveness of organizations using the Balanced Scorecard. They outperform the other companies by about 100 percent in having everyone in the organization understand what the organization's strategy is.

The book also contains a very helpful section of frequently asked questions about the Balanced Scorecard.

Let me be sure that you understand what the limitation of the Balanced Scorecard is. If you conceptualize a strategy that is not as good as one that your competitor develops, you will still be vulnerable to losing ground until such time as you reconceptualize your strategy. The Balanced Scorecard can help you realize that that task is needed and provide some clues, but this process will be most helpful to those who excel at conceiving of pre-emptive strategies that their organizations have advantages in implementing.

After you have finished reading, sharing and applying these lessons, I suggest you think about where else people need better communications processes. Then abstract the elements of this model to apply in those circumstances as well.

Get where you want to go more rapidly!

Balanced Scorecard, 21 Apr 2003
This, and its predecessor, are two of the fundamental management books of all time. A 'must read'. As a bonus, they are even pretty readable!!!

Best Practices in Organizational Communication, 03 Feb 2001
The Strategy-Focused Organization clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the ten most important business books of the past decade. The book successfully outlines an enormous improvement in communications practices for making important changes in for profit and nonprofit organizations. The communications stall is the most prevalent one in most organizations. Application of the authors' ideas can bring about a significant improvement in our society.

This book is an interim report on the application of the authors' concept, the Balanced Scorecard (introduced in 1992 and described in the book of the same name, published in 1996). The purpose of the book is to provide "a roadmap for those who wish to create their own Strategy-Focused Organization . . . [by employing the Balanced Scorecard]."

If you don't know what the Balanced Scorecard is, let me briefly describe it for you. A Balanced Scorecard adds several important measures to the ones normally found in the accounting system, designed to measure those areas where performance most directly and powerfully affects strategic position. Such areas include innovation, organizational learning, effectiveness in key tasks, and performance with key audiences like customers. The measures are chosen to reflect the systematic effects of how the organization's overall value and performance are improved, and are displayed in a Strategy Map that communicates those ideas to one and all. In doing so, the Balanced Scorecard is the applied solution to many of the issues raised about how to establish a learning organization in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

Most new business concepts do not last long enough to warrant a study on their effectiveness. The ones that do, like reengineering a few years ago, usually display more problems than successes. The Balanced Scorecard concept is the exception. The results have been very positive for almost all those who have employed it.

The key seems to lie in having everyone in the organization have a more complete understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. As such, the authors have actually uncovered something much more significant than a strategy communications process. Harvard Business School Professor and accounting guru (Activity-Based Costing) Bob Kaplan and consultant David Norton have uncovered a best practice in how to communicate any important message in an organization. Although the book does not address that latter point, discerning readers will quickly spot it. Presumably the authors will too at some point, and a future book will begin to address this important application.

The focus of this book is on how Balanced Scorecard "adopting companies used [it] . . . to implement new strategies." The finding is that with "their new focus, alignment, and learning, the organizations enjoyed nonlinear performance breakthroughs." This is quite remarkable because organizations have reported in the past that implementing new strategies is one of the most difficult tasks they ever take on. Studies cited by the authors point to one problem being that most people in the organization are never clear on what the new strategy is. So if careful coordination and purposeful change are required, the speeding relay team may instead drop the baton along the way.

The Balanced Scorecard provides for a fundamental strategic control mechanism in the same way that the budget provides an operational control. The Balanced Scorecard is at the center of the organization's business planning, getting feedback to improve learning about how to proceed and then translating the organization's vision for each employee. This feedback is critical because most initial concepts for strategy are flawed in fundamental ways. As the authors point out, strategies should be treated as hypotheses, rather than as commandments written permanently in stone. Only by uncovering those flaws and correcting them does a new strategy have a good chance of succeeding.

The book features a lot of case histories that explain what the most successful organizations have done to apply the Balanced Scorecard. These are particularly valuable for making the key elements of the Balanced Scorecard clearer. For example, the book contains many pages of Strategy Maps for different organizations. These maps connect financial, customer, internal process, and learning objectives in an explicit description of how improvement in each area is connected to each other one, and to the organization's overall objectives. Without these detailed examples, it would be very hard to grasp the heart of the communications process involved here.

These financial and nonfinancial metrics can then be used to create personal objectives for each person in the organization for contributing to the ultimate success. Management by objectives measures and compensation systems can be connected to the new strategy in this way.

The research emphasizes several important themes:

(1) Translate the strategy into operational terms

(2) Align the organization to create necessary synergies

(3) Make strategic initiatives everyone's everyday job

(4) Make strategy a continuing process

(5) Mobilize change through executive leadership

I especially found the surveys helpful for describing what was different about the effectiveness of organizations using the Balanced Scorecard. They outperform the other companies by about 100 percent in having everyone in the organization understand what the organization's strategy is.

The book also contains a very helpful section of frequently asked questions about the Balanced Scorecard.

Let me be sure that you understand what the limitation of the Balanced Scorecard is. If you conceptualize a strategy that is not as good as one that your competitor develops, you will still be vulnerable to losing ground until such time as you reconceptualize your strategy. The Balanced Scorecard can help you realize that that task is needed and provide some clues, but this process will be most helpful to those who excel at conceiving of pre-emptive strategies that their organizations have advantages in implementing.

After you have finished reading, sharing and applying these lessons, I suggest you think about where else people need better communications processes. Then abstract the elements of this model to apply in those circumstances as well.

Get where you want to go more rapidly!

A good read if you have read the previous books, 05 Dec 2000
Kaplan and Norton continue the exploration of the balanced scorecard with a good exposisition of the balanced scorecard in strategy implementation. The ideas of the text are good and the examples sound. There are only two areas of possible weakness. The first is the need to understand the previous book - having not read it in a year I found it useful to refer back, the second is the focus of industries - which are by on large manufacturing, while in a consultancy environment the score card is a useful tool

Packed with Knowledge!, 30 Jun 2005
First published in 1996, this management literature classic builds a bridge between traditional, short-term oriented management systems and a more balanced approach integrating new types of measurements into a comprehensive strategy. This book looks senior managers in the eye and asks, "Are you ready for the future?" Some executives respond to the challenge of change by tinkering, adding a few nonfinancial metrics to the "instrumentation cockpit" that tells them how their corporate ship is running. Others have spurned Balanced Scorecard because it requires CEOs to accept feedback from all levels of their organizations so they will know if their assumptions remain relevant amidst rapid change. To date, however, more than 300 major organizations have used this system to enhance their performance, and future prospects. Abraham Lincoln once said that the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. With apologies to Lincoln, we recommend this book to all senior executives and managers - because the future will be here sooner than you think.

Overcome Poor Communications and Bureaucracy for New Actions, 28 May 2004
The Balanced Scorecard looks at the important issues of alignment, coordination, and effective implementation. Most business thinkers like to start with the big picture, and end there. As a result, most ideas for going in a new direction are quickly diluted by misunderstanding, falling back on old habits, and lethargy. Since Peter Drucker first popularized the idea of business strategy, there have been vastly more strategies conceived than there have been strategies successfully implemented as a result. Much attention has been paid to devising better strategies in the last four decades, and little to implementing strategies. The big pay-off is in the implementation, and The Balanced Scorecard is one of handful of books that provide important and valuable guidance to explain what needs to be done to successfully execute strategy. You must have more measures, and different measures than the accounting system provides. You also need to link measures and compensation to the key tasks that each person must perform. This book is simply the Rosetta Stone of communicating and managing strategy. The Balanced Scorecard is the beginning of the practical period of maturity in the field of business strategy. Read this book today to enjoy much more prosperity! I also recommend that you read The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Handbook, and The Dance of Change to understand more about the context in which you are trying to make positive change. These four books are excellent companions for each other.

The series of books about The Balanced Scorecard includes The Strategy-Focused Organization and Strategy Maps. You'll love all three!

The text that brought performance measurement to the fore, 04 Jun 2002
One of the classic texts of the 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard has brought the importance of performance measurement to a generation of managers. It's still a worthwhile read, although more recent models, like the Performance Prism by Neely, seem much broader in scope.

A big disappointment, 01 Sep 1999
This book does not deliver on the expectations built by the initial Balanced Scorecard articles. It does very little to clarify and structure the concept and approach to building a Balanced Scorecard. There are a few interesting ideas but they get lost in a repetitive and hard to read text.

Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants, 11 Jul 1999
A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.

The Perilous "Journey" to Breakthrough Performance, 25 Jul 2006

If you have not already read Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scoreboard, I presume to suggest that you do so prior to reading this book. However, this sequel is so thoughtful and well-written that it can certainly be of substantial value to decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) which is determined to "thrive in the new business environment." Research data suggest that only 5% of the workforce understand their company's strategy, that only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy, that 60% of organizations don't link budgets to strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy. These and other research findings help to explain why Kaplan and Norton believe so strongly in the power of the Balanced Scorecard. As they suggest, it provides "the central organizing framework for important managerial processes such as individual and team goal setting, compensation, resource allocation, budgeting and planning, and strategic feedback and learning." After rigorous and extensive research of their own, obtained while working closely with several dozen different organizations, Kaplan and Norton observed five common principles of a Strategy-Focused Organization:

1. Translate the strategy to operational terms

2. Align the organization to the strategy

3. Make strategy everyone's job

4. Make strategy a continual process

5. Mobilize change through executive leadership

The first four principles focus on the the Balanced Scorecard tool, framework, and supporting resources; the importance of the fifth principle is self-evident. "With a Balanced Scorecard that tells the story of the strategy, we now have a reliable foundation for the design of a management system to create Strategy-Focused Organizations."

After two introductory chapters, the material is carefully organized and developed within five Parts, each of which examines in detail one of the aforementioned "common principles": Translating the Strategy to Operational Terms, Aligning the Organization to Create Synergies, Making Strategy Everyone's Job, Making Strategy a Continual Process, and finally, Mobilizing Change Through Executive Leadership. Kaplan and Norton then provide a "Frequently Asked Questions" section which some readers may wish to consult first.

There are many pitfalls to be avoided when designing, launching, and implementing the program which Kaplan and Norton present. These pitfalls include lack of senior management commitment, too few individuals involved [or including inappropriate individuals at the outset], keeping the scoreboard at the top, too long a development process (when, in fact, the Balanced Scorecard is a one-time measurement process), treating the Balanced Scorecard as an [isolated] systems project, hiring consultants lacking sufficient experience with a Balanced Scorecard, and introducing the Balanced Scorecard only for compensation. When organizations experience one or more of these pitfalls, their key executives can soon become impatient, confused, frustrated, and ultimately, opposed to Balanced Scorecard initiatives. It is imperative to understand both what the Balanced Scorecard must be (e.g. cohesive and comprehensive) and what it must not be (e.g. fragmented and episodic). Kaplan and Norton correctly note that the journey they propose "is not easy or short. It requires commitment and perseverance. It requires teamwork and integration across traditional organizational boundaries and roles. The message must be reinforced often and in many ways." Those who are determined to achieve organization-wide breakthrough performance are fortunate to have Kaplan and Norton as companions every step of the way during what is indeed a perilous "journey."

Best Practices in Organizational Communication, 23 Aug 2004
The Strategy-Focused Organization clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the ten most important business books of the past ten years. The book successfully outlines an enormous improvement in communications practices for making important changes in for profit and nonprofit organizations. The communications stall is the most prevalent one in most organizations. Application of the authors' ideas can bring about a significant improvement in our society.

This book is an interim report on the application of the authors' concept, the Balanced Scorecard (introduced in 1992 and described in the book of the same name, published in 1996). The purpose of the book is to provide "a roadmap for those who wish to create their own Strategy-Focused Organization . . . [by employing the Balanced Scorecard]."

If you don't know what the Balanced Scorecard is, let me briefly describe it for you. A Balanced Scorecard adds several important measures to the ones normally found in the accounting system, designed to measure those areas where performance most directly and powerfully affects strategic position. Such areas include innovation, organizational learning, effectiveness in key tasks, and performance with key audiences like customers. The measures are chosen to reflect the systematic effects of how the organization's overall value and performance are improved, and are displayed in a Strategy Map that communicates those ideas to one and all. In doing so, the Balanced Scorecard is the applied solution to many of the issues raised about how to establish a learning organization in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

Most new business concepts do not last long enough to warrant a study on their effectiveness. The ones that do, like reengineering a few years ago, usually display more problems than successes. The Balanced Scorecard concept is the exception. The results have been very positive for almost all those who have employed it.

The key seems to lie in having everyone in the organization have a more complete understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. As such, the authors have actually uncovered something much more significant than a strategy communications process. Harvard Business School Professor and accounting guru (Activity-Based Costing) Bob Kaplan and consultant David Norton have uncovered a best practice in how to communicate any important message in an organization. Although the book does not address that latter point, discerning readers will quickly spot it.
Presumably the authors will too at some point, and a future book will begin to address this important application.

The focus of this book is on how Balanced Scorecard companies used that resource to implement new strategies. The finding is that with the Balanced Scorecard, nonlinear success usually followed. This is quite remarkable because organizations have reported in the past that implementing new strategies is one of the most difficult tasks they ever take on. Studies cited by the authors point to one problem being that most people in the organization are never clear on what the new strategy is. So if careful coordination and purposeful change are required, the speeding relay team may instead drop the baton along the way.

The Balanced Scorecard provides for a fundamental strategic control mechanism in the same way that the budget provides an operational control. The Balanced Scorecard is at the center of the organization's business planning, getting feedback to improve learning about how to proceed and then translating the organization's vision for each employee. This feedback is critical because most initial concepts for strategy are flawed in fundamental ways. As the authors point out, strategies should be treated as hypotheses, rather than as commandments written permanently in stone. Only by uncovering those flaws and correcting them does a new strategy have a good chance of succeeding.

The book features a lot of case histories that explain what the most successful organizations have done to apply the Balanced Scorecard. These are particularly valuable for making the key elements of the Balanced Scorecard clearer. For example, the book contains many pages of Strategy Maps for different organizations. These maps connect financial, customer, internal process, and learning objectives in an explicit description of how improvement in each area is connected to each other one, and to the organization's overall objectives. Without these detailed examples, it would be very hard to grasp the heart of the communications process involved here.

These financial and nonfinancial metrics can then be used to create personal objectives for each person in the organization for contributing to the ultimate success. Management by objectives measures and compensation systems can be connected to the new strategy in this way.

The research emphasizes several important themes: (1) Translate the strategy into operational terms (2) Align the organization to create necessary synergies (3) Make strategic initiatives everyone's everyday job (4) Make strategy a continuing process (5) Mobilize change through executive leadership.

I especially found the surveys helpful for describing what was different about the effectiveness of organizations using the Balanced Scorecard. They outperform the other companies by about 100 percent in having everyone in the organization understand what the organization's strategy is.

The book also contains a very helpful section of frequently asked questions about the Balanced Scorecard.

Let me be sure that you understand what the limitation of the Balanced Scorecard is. If you conceptualize a strategy that is not as good as one that your competitor develops, you will still be vulnerable to losing ground until such time as you reconceptualize your strategy. The Balanced Scorecard can help you realize that that task is needed and provide some clues, but this process will be most helpful to those who excel at conceiving of pre-emptive strategies that their organizations have advantages in implementing.

After you have finished reading, sharing and applying these lessons, I suggest you think about where else people need better communications processes. Then abstract the elements of this model to apply in those circumstances as well.

Get where you want to go more rapidly!

Balanced Scorecard, 21 Apr 2003
This, and its predecessor, are two of the fundamental management books of all time. A 'must read'. As a bonus, they are even pretty readable!!!

Best Practices in Organizational Communication, 03 Feb 2001
The Strategy-Focused Organization clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the ten most important business books of the past decade. The book successfully outlines an enormous improvement in communications practices for making important changes in for profit and nonprofit organizations. The communications stall is the most prevalent one in most organizations. Application of the authors' ideas can bring about a significant improvement in our society.

This book is an interim report on the application of the authors' concept, the Balanced Scorecard (introduced in 1992 and described in the book of the same name, published in 1996). The purpose of the book is to provide "a roadmap for those who wish to create their own Strategy-Focused Organization . . . [by employing the Balanced Scorecard]."

If you don't know what the Balanced Scorecard is, let me briefly describe it for you. A Balanced Scorecard adds several important measures to the ones normally found in the accounting system, designed to measure those areas where performance most directly and powerfully affects strategic position. Such areas include innovation, organizational learning, effectiveness in key tasks, and performance with key audiences like customers. The measures are chosen to reflect the systematic effects of how the organization's overall value and performance are improved, and are displayed in a Strategy Map that communicates those ideas to one and all. In doing so, the Balanced Scorecard is the applied solution to many of the issues raised about how to establish a learning organization in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

Most new business concepts do not last long enough to warrant a study on their effectiveness. The ones that do, like reengineering a few years ago, usually display more problems than successes. The Balanced Scorecard concept is the exception. The results have been very positive for almost all those who have employed it.

The key seems to lie in having everyone in the organization have a more complete understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. As such, the authors have actually uncovered something much more significant than a strategy communications process. Harvard Business School Professor and accounting guru (Activity-Based Costing) Bob Kaplan and consultant David Norton have uncovered a best practice in how to communicate any important message in an organization. Although the book does not address that latter point, discerning readers will quickly spot it. Presumably the authors will too at some point, and a future book will begin to address this important application.

The focus of this book is on how Balanced Scorecard "adopting companies used [it] . . . to implement new strategies." The finding is that with "their new focus, alignment, and learning, the organizations enjoyed nonlinear performance breakthroughs." This is quite remarkable because organizations have reported in the past that implementing new strategies is one of the most difficult tasks they ever take on. Studies cited by the authors point to one problem being that most people in the organization are never clear on what the new strategy is. So if careful coordination and purposeful change are required, the speeding relay team may instead drop the baton along the way.

The Balanced Scorecard provides for a fundamental strategic control mechanism in the same way that the budget provides an operational control. The Balanced Scorecard is at the center of the organization's business planning, getting feedback to improve learning about how to proceed and then translating the organization's vision for each employee. This feedback is critical because most initial concepts for strategy are flawed in fundamental ways. As the authors point out, strategies should be treated as hypotheses, rather than as commandments written permanently in stone. Only by uncovering those flaws and correcting them does a new strategy have a good chance of succeeding.

The book features a lot of case histories that explain what the most successful organizations have done to apply the Balanced Scorecard. These are particularly valuable for making the key elements of the Balanced Scorecard clearer. For example, the book contains many pages of Strategy Maps for different organizations. These maps connect financial, customer, internal process, and learning objectives in an explicit description of how improvement in each area is connected to each other one, and to the organization's overall objectives. Without these detailed examples, it would be very hard to grasp the heart of the communications process involved here.

These financial and nonfinancial metrics can then be used to create personal objectives for each person in the organization for contributing to the ultimate success. Management by objectives measures and compensation systems can be connected to the new strategy in this way.

The research emphasizes several important themes:

(1) Translate the strategy into operational terms

(2) Align the organization to create necessary synergies

(3) Make strategic initiatives everyone's everyday job

(4) Make strategy a continuing process

(5) Mobilize change through executive leadership

I especially found the surveys helpful for describing what was different about the effectiveness of organizations using the Balanced Scorecard. They outperform the other companies by about 100 percent in having everyone in the organization understand what the organization's strategy is.

The book also contains a very helpful section of frequently asked questions about the Balanced Scorecard.

Let me be sure that you understand what the limitation of the Balanced Scorecard is. If you conceptualize a strategy that is not as good as one that your competitor develops, you will still be vulnerable to losing ground until such time as you reconceptualize your strategy. The Balanced Scorecard can help you realize that that task is needed and provide some clues, but this process will be most helpful to those who excel at conceiving of pre-emptive strategies that their organizations have advantages in implementing.

After you have finished reading, sharing and applying these lessons, I suggest you think about where else people need better communications processes. Then abstract the elements of this model to apply in those circumstances as well.

Get where you want to go more rapidly!

A good read if you have read the previous books, 05 Dec 2000
Kaplan and Norton continue the exploration of the balanced scorecard with a good exposisition of the balanced scorecard in strategy implementation. The ideas of the text are good and the examples sound. There are only two areas of possible weakness. The first is the need to understand the previous book - having not read it in a year I found it useful to refer back, the second is the focus of industries - which are by on large manufacturing, while in a consultancy environment the score card is a useful tool

Their most important book thus far., 07 Jun 2006

After their article "The Balanced Scorecard - Measures That Drive Performance" appeared in Harvard Business Review" (January-February, 1992), Kaplan and Norton co-authored four books in which they expand and fine-tune several of their core concepts about the Balanced Scorecard. What we have in this volume is a brilliant analysis of how to use the Balanced Scorecard to create corporate synergies. As they observe in the Preface, they have identified five key principles "for aligning an organization's management and measurement systems to strategy":

1. Mobilize change through executive leadership.
2. Translate strategy into operational terms.
3. Align the organization to the strategy.
4. Motivate to make strategy everyone's job.
5. Govern to make strategy a continual process.

When gathering the information needed to write this book, Kaplan and Norton rigorously examined more than 30 organizations which include Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Citizens Schools, Hilton, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Media General, and the U.S. Army. Note how different these organizations are in terms of their respective products and services, markets, and potentialities for aligning their management processes and systems to the given strategy. I assume that the diversity of the exemplary enterprises during Kaplan and Norton's selection process was deliberate because they are convinced - as am I - that if the core principles of the Balanced Scorecard are applied effectively, any organization (regardless of its size or nature) can create highly beneficial synergies by getting its management and measurement in proper alignment with its strategy. In this book, Kaplan and Norton explain how to do that. Obviously, it is difficult to achieve such alignment and even more difficult to sustain it. Although a cliché, it remains true that change is the only constant. Moreover, change seems to occur much more rapidly now than ever before. What is in proper alignment today may not be tomorrow...or by the end of today

Nothing within an organization's structure can be in proper balance unless and until it is in proper alignment. Hence the importance of prioritization and, especially, of proportionality (e.g. allocation of resources). Here is a brief excerpt from Chapter 10. "The Balanced Scorecard, since its introduction in 1992, has evolved into the centerpiece of a sophisticated system to manage the execution of strategy. The effectiveness of the approach is derived from two simple capabilities: (1) the ability to clearly describe strategy (the contribution of Strategy Maps) and (2) the ability to link strategy to the management system (the contribution of Balanced Scorecards). The net result is the ability to align all units, processes, and systems of an organization to its strategy." With this brief statement, Kaplan and Norton suggest the interdependence of strategy, alignment, and executive leadership.

In my opinion, this is the most important book written thus far by Kaplan and Norton. In it, they develop in much greater detail many of the same concepts they examined in previous books but they also share what they have learned over the years about devising, implementing, and then sustaining (while fine-tuning) the "sophisticated system" to which they refer in the excerpt just provided. Their collaborative thinking, as is also true of every organization they discuss, continues to be "a work in progress."

Focus and Coordinate Your Organization's Energies for Better Strategic Execution, 26 Apr 2006

Alignment is a superb addition to the remarkable series written by Professor Robert S. Kaplan and Dr. David P. Norton. If you have not yet read Strategy Maps, The Balanced Scorecard and The Strategy-Focused Organization, you should begin with those books before reading this one. With each book in the series, you'll find out more about how to create and use balanced scorecards . . . and your organization will prosper because of it.

Leaders have always found it much easier to formulate strategy than to turn strategies into accomplishments. As the authors note, many such organizations are like an uncoordinated 8-person rowing shell than a championship team.

In studies of the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame organizations, the authors learned that organizational alignment is a more important factor than mobilization, strategic translation, employee motivation and governance in achieving superior results during execution.

The authors identify eight essential check points for successful organizational alignment:

1. An enterprise value proposition (to lead strategic guidelines)
2. Board and shareholder alignment (to approve, review and monitor strategy)
3. Coordination between the corporate offices and the corporate support units (by creating corporate policies)
4. Coordination between the corporate office and the business units (business unit strategy matching the corporate direction)
5. Coordination between the business units and the support units (to create appropriate functional strategies)
6. Alignment between business units and their customers (an on-going to and fro)
7. Alignment among business support teams and their suppliers and external partners (to share problems and solutions)
8. Company support coordination (among the corporate support people and the business support activities)

To get a sense of the whole process, be sure to turn to figure 9-1.

The great strength of the book comes, however, in its many examples and case studies involving organizations like Aktira, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Citizen Schools, City of Brisbane, DuPont Engineering Polymers, Handleman, Hilton Hotels, IBM Leasing, Ingersoll Rand, KeyCorp, Lockheed Martin Enterprise Information Systems, Marriott Vacation Club, MDS, Metalcraft (disguised name), Media General, New Profit Inc., Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Salmon recovery in Washington State, Sport-Man, Inc. Tiger Textiles (disguised name), and the U.S. Army.

Bravo!

Don't miss this book.

Translate, cascade and align your strategies, 24 Mar 2006
This book is about organizational alignment. It is the fourth in a series of thought-leading books on how to translate strategy into actions - via balanced scorecard, strategy maps, and the strategy-focused organization.

The authors start with a wonderful story:
Imagine an eight-person shell racing up the river populated by highly trained rowers, but each with different ideas of how to achieve success. But rowing at different speeds and in different directions could cause the shell to travel in circles and perhaps capsize. The winning team invariably rows in beautiful synchronism; each rower strokes powerfully but consistently with all the others, guided by a coxswain [corporate center], who has the responsibility for pacing and steering the course of action.

Unfortunately, many firms are like an uncoordinated shell. They consist of strong business units, each populated by highly trained, experienced and motivated executives. But the efforts of the individual businesses are not coordinated.

Unsurprisingly, the authors suggest that their four scorecard perspectives on financials, customers, processes, as well as growth/learning also could be used to create organizational alignment and also find synergies, e.g.
- FINANCIAL: acquiring and integrating other firms, monitoring and governance processes, skills in negotiating with external entities (capital providers, etc.)
- CUSTOMERS: leverage common customers (cross-sales), corporate brand, common customer value propositions across the world,
- PROCESSES: exploiting core competencies in product or production technologies, sourcing or distribution skills, etc.
- LEARNING AND GROWTH: Enhancing human capital thru excellent HR practices, leveraging a common technology, sharing best-practices and knowledge.

The book does not only focus on how to align the corporate-level and businesses, it also covers how to align towards support functions (finance, IT and HR), external business partners (customers, suppliers) and even the board.

Don't buy this book as your first on scorecards. It requires that you have read some of the previous published articles or books by the author team. However, if you are a balanced scorecard practitioner, then this book adds yet another dimension to our understanding of how to make scorecard systems work in an organization.

Being a corporate strategist, I can use most of this thinking in my day-to-day work - and I can highly recommend it to all other scorecard insiders.

If you're interested in Balanced Scorecard, you should obviously read the core by Kaplan and Norton - especially the "Strategy-Focused Organization". But I also recommend a very capable book by the Swedes Olve et al (2003) - "Making Scorecards Actionable: Balancing Strategy and Control" - that even includes some thinking on why balanced scorecards go wrong - and what to do about it. Paul Niven (2005) does the same in his "Balanced scorecard diagnostics".

If you're even more interested in performance measurement systems, then do also consider "Performance Prism" by Neely et al (2002) that takes performance systems to the next level. Personally, I don't believe they've designed balanced scorecard's successor, but they have many interesting perspectives on stakeholders, choice of measurements, and the relationship between cause and effect.

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Packed with Knowledge!, 30 Jun 2005
First published in 1996, this management literature classic builds a bridge between traditional, short-term oriented management systems and a more balanced approach integrating new types of measurements into a comprehensive strategy. This book looks senior managers in the eye and asks, "Are you ready for the future?" Some executives respond to the challenge of change by tinkering, adding a few nonfinancial metrics to the "instrumentation cockpit" that tells them how their corporate ship is running. Others have spurned Balanced Scorecard because it requires CEOs to accept feedback from all levels of their organizations so they will know if their assumptions remain relevant amidst rapid change. To date, however, more than 300 major organizations have used this system to enhance their performance, and future prospects. Abraham Lincoln once said that the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. With apologies to Lincoln, we recommend this book to all senior executives and managers - because the future will be here sooner than you think.

Overcome Poor Communications and Bureaucracy for New Actions, 28 May 2004
The Balanced Scorecard looks at the important issues of alignment, coordination, and effective implementation. Most business thinkers like to start with the big picture, and end there. As a result, most ideas for going in a new direction are quickly diluted by misunderstanding, falling back on old habits, and lethargy. Since Peter Drucker first popularized the idea of business strategy, there have been vastly more strategies conceived than there have been strategies successfully implemented as a result. Much attention has been paid to devising better strategies in the last four decades, and little to implementing strategies. The big pay-off is in the implementation, and The Balanced Scorecard is one of handful of books that provide important and valuable guidance to explain what needs to be done to successfully execute strategy. You must have more measures, and different measures than the accounting system provides. You also need to link measures and compensation to the key tasks that each person must perform. This book is simply the Rosetta Stone of communicating and managing strategy. The Balanced Scorecard is the beginning of the practical period of maturity in the field of business strategy. Read this book today to enjoy much more prosperity! I also recommend that you read The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Handbook, and The Dance of Change to understand more about the context in which you are trying to make positive change. These four books are excellent companions for each other.

The series of books about The Balanced Scorecard includes The Strategy-Focused Organization and Strategy Maps. You'll love all three!

The text that brought performance measurement to the fore, 04 Jun 2002
One of the classic texts of the 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard has brought the importance of performance measurement to a generation of managers. It's still a worthwhile read, although more recent models, like the Performance Prism by Neely, seem much broader in scope.

A big disappointment, 01 Sep 1999
This book does not deliver on the expectations built by the initial Balanced Scorecard articles. It does very little to clarify and structure the concept and approach to building a Balanced Scorecard. There are a few interesting ideas but they get lost in a repetitive and hard to read text.

Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants, 11 Jul 1999
A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.

The Perilous "Journey" to Breakthrough Performance, 25 Jul 2006

If you have not already read Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scoreboard, I presume to suggest that you do so prior to reading this book. However, this sequel is so thoughtful and well-written that it can certainly be of substantial value to decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) which is determined to "thrive in the new business environment." Research data suggest that only 5% of the workforce understand their company's strategy, that only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy, that 60% of organizations don't link budgets to strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy. These and other research findings help to explain why Kaplan and Norton believe so strongly in the power of the Balanced Scorecard. As they suggest, it provides "the central organizing framework for important managerial processes such as individual and team goal setting, compensation, resource allocation, budgeting and planning, and strategic feedback and learning." After rigorous and extensive research of their own, obtained while working closely with several dozen different organizations, Kaplan and Norton observed five common principles of a Strategy-Focused Organization:

1. Translate the strategy to operational terms

2. Align the organization to the strategy

3. Make strategy everyone's job

4. Make strategy a continual process

5. Mobilize change through executive leadership

The first four principles focus on the the Balanced Scorecard tool, framework, and supporting resources; the importance of the fifth principle is self-evident. "With a Balanced Scorecard that tells the story of the strategy, we now have a reliable foundation for the design of a management system to create Strategy-Focused Organizations."

After two introductory chapters, the material is carefully organized and developed within five Parts, each of which examines in detail one of the aforementioned "common principles": Translating the Strategy to Operational Terms, Aligning the Organization to Create Synergies, Making Strategy Everyone's Job, Making Strategy a Continual Process, and finally, Mobilizing Change Through Executive Leadership. Kaplan and Norton then provide a "Frequently Asked Questions" section which some readers may wish to consult first.

There are many pitfalls to be avoided when designing, launching, and implementing the program which Kaplan and Norton present. These pitfalls include lack of senior management commitment, too few individuals involved [or including inappropriate individuals at the outset], keeping the scoreboard at the top, too long a development process (when, in fact, the Balanced Scorecard is a one-time measurement process), treating the Balanced Scorecard as an [isolated] systems project, hiring consultants lacking sufficient experience with a Balanced Scorecard, and introducing the Balanced Scorecard only for compensation. When organizations experience one or more of these pitfalls, their key executives can soon become impatient, confused, frustrated, and ultimately, opposed to Balanced Scorecard initiatives. It is imperative to understand both what the Balanced Scorecard must be (e.g. cohesive and comprehensive) and what it must not be (e.g. fragmented and episodic). Kaplan and Norton correctly note that the journey they propose "is not easy or short. It requires commitment and perseverance. It requires teamwork and integration across traditional organizational boundaries and roles. The message must be reinforced often and in many ways." Those who are determined to achieve organization-wide breakthrough performance are fortunate to have Kaplan and Norton as companions every step of the way during what is indeed a perilous "journey."

Best Practices in Organizational Communication, 23 Aug 2004
The Strategy-Focused Organization clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the ten most important business books of the past ten years. The book successfully outlines an enormous improvement in communications practices for making important changes in for profit and nonprofit organizations. The communications stall is the most prevalent one in most organizations. Application of the authors' ideas can bring about a significant improvement in our society.

This book is an interim report on the application of the authors' concept, the Balanced Scorecard (introduced in 1992 and described in the book of the same name, published in 1996). The purpose of the book is to provide "a roadmap for those who wish to create their own Strategy-Focused Organization . . . [by employing the Balanced Scorecard]."

If you don't know what the Balanced Scorecard is, let me briefly describe it for you. A Balanced Scorecard adds several important measures to the ones normally found in the accounting system, designed to measure those areas where performance most directly and powerfully affects strategic position. Such areas include innovation, organizational learning, effectiveness in key tasks, and performance with key audiences like customers. The measures are chosen to reflect the systematic effects of how the organization's overall value and performance are improved, and are displayed in a Strategy Map that communicates those ideas to one and all. In doing so, the Balanced Scorecard is the applied solution to many of the issues raised about how to establish a learning organization in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

Most new business concepts do not last long enough to warrant a study on their effectiveness. The ones that do, like reengineering a few years ago, usually display more problems than successes. The Balanced Scorecard concept is the exception. The results have been very positive for almost all those who have employed it.

The key seems to lie in having everyone in the organization have a more complete understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. As such, the authors have actually uncovered something much more significant than a strategy communications process. Harvard Business School Professor and accounting guru (Activity-Based Costing) Bob Kaplan and consultant David Norton have uncovered a best practice in how to communicate any important message in an organization. Although the book does not address that latter point, discerning readers will quickly spot it.
Presumably the authors will too at some point, and a future book will begin to address this important application.

The focus of this book is on how Balanced Scorecard companies used that resource to implement new strategies. The finding is that with the Balanced Scorecard, nonlinear success usually followed. This is quite remarkable because organizations have reported in the past that implementing new strategies is one of the most difficult tasks they ever take on. Studies cited by the authors point to one problem being that most people in the organization are never clear on what the new strategy is. So if careful coordination and purposeful change are required, the speeding relay team may instead drop the baton along the way.

The Balanced Scorecard provides for a fundamental strategic control mechanism in the same way that the budget provides an operational control. The Balanced Scorecard is at the center of the organization's business planning, getting feedback to improve learning about how to proceed and then translating the organization's vision for each employee. This feedback is critical because most initial concepts for strategy are flawed in fundamental ways. As the authors point out, strategies should be treated as hypotheses, rather than as commandments written permanently in stone. Only by uncovering those flaws and correcting them does a new strategy have a good chance of succeeding.

The book features a lot of case histories that explain what the most successful organizations have done to apply the Balanced Scorecard. These are particularly valuable for making the key elements of the Balanced Scorecard clearer. For example, the book contains many pages of Strategy Maps for different organizations. These maps connect financial, customer, internal process, and learning objectives in an explicit description of how improvement in each area is connected to each other one, and to the organization's overall objectives. Without these detailed examples, it would be very hard to grasp the heart of the communications process involved here.

These financial and nonfinancial metrics can then be used to create personal objectives for each person in the organization for contributing to the ultimate success. Management by objectives measures and compensation systems can be connected to the new strategy in this way.

The research emphasizes several important themes: (1) Translate the strategy into operational terms (2) Align the organization to create necessary synergies (3) Make strategic initiatives everyone's everyday job (4) Make strategy a continuing process (5) Mobilize change through executive leadership.

I especially found the surveys helpful for describing what was different about the effectiveness of organizations using the Balanced Scorecard. They outperform the other companies by about 100 percent in having everyone in the organization understand what the organization's strategy is.

The book also contains a very helpful section of frequently asked questions about the Balanced Scorecard.

Let me be sure that you understand what the limitation of the Balanced Scorecard is. If you conceptualize a strategy that is not as good as one that your competitor develops, you will still be vulnerable to losing ground until such time as you reconceptualize your strategy. The Balanced Scorecard can help you realize that that task is needed and provide some clues, but this process will be most helpful to those who excel at conceiving of pre-emptive strategies that their organizations have advantages in implementing.

After you have finished reading, sharing and applying these lessons, I suggest you think about where else people need better communications processes. Then abstract the elements of this model to apply in those circumstances as well.

Get where you want to go more rapidly!

Balanced Scorecard, 21 Apr 2003
This, and its predecessor, are two of the fundamental management books of all time. A 'must read'. As a bonus, they are even pretty readable!!!

Best Practices in Organizational Communication, 03 Feb 2001
The Strategy-Focused Organization clearly deserves more than five stars. It is one of the ten most important business books of the past decade. The book successfully outlines an enormous improvement in communications practices for making important changes in for profit and nonprofit organizations. The communications stall is the most prevalent one in most organizations. Application of the authors' ideas can bring about a significant improvement in our society.

This book is an interim report on the application of the authors' concept, the Balanced Scorecard (introduced in 1992 and described in the book of the same name, published in 1996). The purpose of the book is to provide "a roadmap for those who wish to create their own Strategy-Focused Organization . . . [by employing the Balanced Scorecard]."

If you don't know what the Balanced Scorecard is, let me briefly describe it for you. A Balanced Scorecard adds several important measures to the ones normally found in the accounting system, designed to measure those areas where performance most directly and powerfully affects strategic position. Such areas include innovation, organizational learning, effectiveness in key tasks, and performance with key audiences like customers. The measures are chosen to reflect the systematic effects of how the organization's overall value and performance are improved, and are displayed in a Strategy Map that communicates those ideas to one and all. In doing so, the Balanced Scorecard is the applied solution to many of the issues raised about how to establish a learning organization in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline.

Most new business concepts do not last long enough to warrant a study on their effectiveness. The ones that do, like reengineering a few years ago, usually display more problems than successes. The Balanced Scorecard concept is the exception. The results have been very positive for almost all those who have employed it.

The key seems to lie in having everyone in the organization have a more complete understanding of what the organization is trying to accomplish. As such, the authors have actually uncovered something much more significant than a strategy communications process. Harvard Business School Professor and accounting guru (Activity-Based Costing) Bob Kaplan and consultant David Norton have uncovered a best practice in how to communicate any important message in an organization. Although the book does not address that latter point, discerning readers will quickly spot it. Presumably the authors will too at some point, and a future book will begin to address this important application.

The focus of this book is on how Balanced Scorecard "adopting companies used [it] . . . to implement new strategies." The finding is that with "their new focus, alignment, and learning, the organizations enjoyed nonlinear performance breakthroughs." This is quite remarkable because organizations have reported in the past that implementing new strategies is one of the most difficult tasks they ever take on. Studies cited by the authors point to one problem being that most people in the organization are never clear on what the new strategy is. So if careful coordination and purposeful change are required, the speeding relay team may instead drop the baton along the way.

The Balanced Scorecard provides for a fundamental strategic control mechanism in the same way that the budget provides an operational control. The Balanced Scorecard is at the center of the organization's business planning, getting feedback to improve learning about how to proceed and then translating the organization's vision for each employee. This feedback is critical because most initial concepts for strategy are flawed in fundamental ways. As the authors point out, strategies should be treated as hypotheses, rather than as commandments written permanently in stone. Only by uncovering those flaws and correcting them does a new strategy have a good chance of succeeding.

The book features a lot of case histories that explain what the most successful organizations have done to apply the Balanced Scorecard. These are particularly valuable for making the key elements of the Balanced Scorecard clearer. For example, the book contains many pages of Strategy Maps for different organizations. These maps connect financial, customer, internal process, and learning objectives in an explicit description of how improvement in each area is connected to each other one, and to the organization's overall objectives. Without these detailed examples, it would be very hard to grasp the heart of the communications process involved here.

These financial and nonfinancial metrics can then be used to create personal objectives for each person in the organization for contributing to the ultimate success. Management by objectives measures and compensation systems can be connected to the new strategy in this way.

The research emphasizes several important themes:

(1) Translate the strategy into operational terms

(2) Align the organization to create necessary synergies

(3) Make strategic initiatives everyone's everyday job

(4) Make strategy a continuing process

(5) Mobilize change through executive leadership

I especially found the surveys helpful for describing what was different about the effectiveness of organizations using the Balanced Scorecard. They outperform the other companies by about 100 percent in having everyone in the organization understand what the organization's strategy is.

The book also contains a very helpful section of frequently asked questions about the Balanced Scorecard.

Let me be sure that you understand what the limitation of the Balanced Scorecard is. If you conceptualize a strategy that is not as good as one that your competitor develops, you will still be vulnerable to losing ground until such time as you reconceptualize your strategy. The Balanced Scorecard can help you realize that that task is needed and provide some clues, but this process will be most helpful to those who excel at conceiving of pre-emptive strategies that their organizations have advantages in implementing.

After you have finished reading, sharing and applying these lessons, I suggest you think about where else people need better communications processes. Then abstract the elements of this model to apply in those circumstances as well.

Get where you want to go more rapidly!

A good read if you have read the previous books, 05 Dec 2000
Kaplan and Norton continue the exploration of the balanced scorecard with a good exposisition of the balanced scorecard in strategy implementation. The ideas of the text are good and the examples sound. There are only two areas of possible weakness. The first is the need to understand the previous book - having not read it in a year I found it useful to refer back, the second is the focus of industries - which are by on large manufacturing, while in a consultancy environment the score card is a useful tool

Their most important book thus far., 07 Jun 2006

After their article "The Balanced Scorecard - Measures That Drive Performance" appeared in Harvard Business Review" (January-February, 1992), Kaplan and Norton co-authored four books in which they expand and fine-tune several of their core concepts about the Balanced Scorecard. What we have in this volume is a brilliant analysis of how to use the Balanced Scorecard to create corporate synergies. As they observe in the Preface, they have identified five key principles "for aligning an organization's management and measurement systems to strategy":

1. Mobilize change through executive leadership.
2. Translate strategy into operational terms.
3. Align the organization to the strategy.
4. Motivate to make strategy everyone's job.
5. Govern to make strategy a continual process.

When gathering the information needed to write this book, Kaplan and Norton rigorously examined more than 30 organizations which include Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Citizens Schools, Hilton, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Media General, and the U.S. Army. Note how different these organizations are in terms of their respective products and services, markets, and potentialities for aligning their management processes and systems to the given strategy. I assume that the diversity of the exemplary enterprises during Kaplan and Norton's selection process was deliberate because they are convinced - as am I - that if the core principles of the Balanced Scorecard are applied effectively, any organization (regardless of its size or nature) can create highly beneficial synergies by getting its management and measurement in proper alignment with its strategy. In this book, Kaplan and Norton explain how to do that. Obviously, it is difficult to achieve such alignment and even more difficult to sustain it. Although a cliché, it remains true that change is the only constant. Moreover, change seems to occur much more rapidly now than ever before. What is in proper alignment today may not be tomorrow...or by the end of today

Nothing within an organization's structure can be in proper balance unless and until it is in proper alignment. Hence the importance of prioritization and, especially, of proportionality (e.g. allocation of resources). Here is a brief excerpt from Chapter 10. "The Balanced Scorecard, since its introduction in 1992, has evolved into the centerpiece of a sophisticated system to manage the execution of strategy. The effectiveness of the approach is derived from two simple capabilities: (1) the ability to clearly describe strategy (the contribution of Strategy Maps) and (2) the ability to link strategy to the management system (the contribution of Balanced Scorecards). The net result is the ability to align all units, processes, and systems of an organization to its strategy." With this brief statement, Kaplan and Norton suggest the interdependence of strategy, alignment, and executive leadership.

In my opinion, this is the most important book written thus far by Kaplan and Norton. In it, they develop in much greater detail many of the same concepts they examined in previous books but they also share what they have learned over the years about devising, implementing, and then sustaining (while fine-tuning) the "sophisticated system" to which they refer in the excerpt just provided. Their collaborative thinking, as is also true of every organization they discuss, continues to be "a work in progress."

Focus and Coordinate Your Organization's Energies for Better Strategic Execution, 26 Apr 2006

Alignment is a superb addition to the remarkable series written by Professor Robert S. Kaplan and Dr. David P. Norton. If you have not yet read Strategy Maps, The Balanced Scorecard and The Strategy-Focused Organization, you should begin with those books before reading this one. With each book in the series, you'll find out more about how to create and use balanced scorecards . . . and your organization will prosper because of it.

Leaders have always found it much easier to formulate strategy than to turn strategies into accomplishments. As the authors note, many such organizations are like an uncoordinated 8-person rowing shell than a championship team.

In studies of the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame organizations, the authors learned that organizational alignment is a more important factor than mobilization, strategic translation, employee motivation and governance in achieving superior results during execution.

The authors identify eight essential check points for successful organizational alignment:

1. An enterprise value proposition (to lead strategic guidelines)
2. Board and shareholder alignment (to approve, review and monitor strategy)
3. Coordination between the corporate offices and the corporate support units (by creating corporate policies)
4. Coordination between the corporate office and the business units (business unit strategy matching the corporate direction)
5. Coordination between the business units and the support units (to create appropriate functional strategies)
6. Alignment between business units and their customers (an on-going to and fro)
7. Alignment among business support teams and their suppliers and external partners (to share problems and solutions)
8. Company support coordination (among the corporate support people and the business support activities)

To get a sense of the whole process, be sure to turn to figure 9-1.

The great strength of the book comes, however, in its many examples and case studies involving organizations like Aktira, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Citizen Schools, City of Brisbane, DuPont Engineering Polymers, Handleman, Hilton Hotels, IBM Leasing, Ingersoll Rand, KeyCorp, Lockheed Martin Enterprise Information Systems, Marriott Vacation Club, MDS, Metalcraft (disguised name), Media General, New Profit Inc., Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Salmon recovery in Washington State, Sport-Man, Inc. Tiger Textiles (disguised name), and the U.S. Army.

Bravo!

Don't miss this book.

Translate, cascade and align your strategies, 24 Mar 2006
This book is about organizational alignment. It is the fourth in a series of thought-leading books on how to translate strategy into actions - via balanced scorecard, strategy maps, and the strategy-focused organization.

The authors start with a wonderful story:
Imagine an eight-person shell racing up the river populated by highly trained rowers, but each with different ideas of how to achieve success. But rowing at different speeds and in different directions could cause the shell to travel in circles and perhaps capsize. The winning team invariably rows in beautiful synchronism; each rower strokes powerfully but consistently with all the others, guided by a coxswain [corporate center], who has the responsibility for pacing and steering the course of action.

Unfortunately, many firms are like an uncoordinated shell. They consist of strong business units, each populated by highly trained, experienced and motivated executives. But the efforts of the individual businesses are not coordinated.

Unsurprisingly, the authors suggest that their four scorecard perspectives on financials, customers, processes, as well as growth/learning also could be used to create organizational alignment and also find synergies, e.g.
- FINANCIAL: acquiring and integrating other firms, monitoring and governance processes, skills in negotiating with external entities (capital providers, etc.)
- CUSTOMERS: leverage common customers (cross-sales), corporate brand, common customer value propositions across the world,
- PROCESSES: exploiting core competencies in product or production technologies, sourcing or distribution skills, etc.
- LEARNING AND GROWTH: Enhancing human capital thru excellent HR practices, leveraging a common technology, sharing best-practices and knowledge.

The book does not only focus on how to align the corporate-level and businesses, it also covers how to align towards support functions (finance, IT and HR), external business partners (customers, suppliers) and even the board.

Don't buy this book as your first on scorecards. It requires that you have read some of the previous published articles or books by the author team. However, if you are a balanced scorecard practitioner, then this book adds yet another dimension to our understanding of how to make scorecard systems work in an organization.

Being a corporate strategist, I can use most of this thinking in my day-to-day work - and I can highly recommend it to all other scorecard insiders.

If you're interested in Balanced Scorecard, you should obviously read the core by Kaplan and Norton - especially the "Strategy-Focused Organization". But I also recommend a very capable book by the Swedes Olve et al (2003) - "Making Scorecards Actionable: Balancing Strategy and Control" - that even includes some thinking on why balanced scorecards go wrong - and what to do about it. Paul Niven (2005) does the same in his "Balanced scorecard diagnostics".

If you're even more interested in performance measurement systems, then do also consider "Performance Prism" by Neely et al (2002) that takes performance systems to the next level. Personally, I don't believe they've designed balanced scorecard's successor, but they have many interesting perspectives on stakeholders, choice of measurements, and the relationship between cause and effect.

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Clearly written by a Dummy!, 28 Oct 2008
Not a bad attempt at coralling together the basics of scorecards but it's very hard to focus on the message when the writing and proof-reading are so diabolical. Basic typos all over the place, intermittent use of punctuation, incorrect use of words - yes, there is a difference between distract and detract, not that these guys seem to recognise the fact. Overall, it has the feel of something cobbled together in a hurry to jump on the performance measure bandwagon - there are better written books out there for sure!

Packed with Knowledge!, 30 Jun 2005
First published in 1996, this management literature classic builds a bridge between traditional, short-term oriented management systems and a more balanced approach integrating new types of measurements into a comprehensive strategy. This book looks senior managers in the eye and asks, "Are you ready for the future?" Some executives respond to the challenge of change by tinkering, adding a few nonfinancial metrics to the "instrumentation cockpit" that tells them how their corporate ship is running. Others have spurned Balanced Scorecard because it requires CEOs to accept feedback from all levels of their organizations so they will know if their assumptions remain relevant amidst rapid change. To date, however, more than 300 major organizations have used this system to enhance their performance, and future prospects. Abraham Lincoln once said that the best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. With apologies to Lincoln, we recommend this book to all senior executives and managers - because the future will be here sooner than you think.

Overcome Poor Communications and Bureaucracy for New Actions, 28 May 2004
The Balanced Scorecard looks at the important issues of alignment, coordination, and effective implementation. Most business thinkers like to start with the big picture, and end there. As a result, most ideas for going in a new direction are quickly diluted by misunderstanding, falling back on old habits, and lethargy. Since Peter Drucker first popularized the idea of business strategy, there have been vastly more strategies conceived than there have been strategies successfully implemented as a result. Much attention has been paid to devising better strategies in the last four decades, and little to implementing strategies. The big pay-off is in the implementation, and The Balanced Scorecard is one of handful of books that provide important and valuable guidance to explain what needs to be done to successfully execute strategy. You must have more measures, and different measures than the accounting system provides. You also need to link measures and compensation to the key tasks that each person must perform. This book is simply the Rosetta Stone of communicating and managing strategy. The Balanced Scorecard is the beginning of the practical period of maturity in the field of business strategy. Read this book today to enjoy much more prosperity! I also recommend that you read The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Handbook, and The Dance of Change to understand more about the context in which you are trying to make positive change. These four books are excellent companions for each other.

The series of books about The Balanced Scorecard includes The Strategy-Focused Organization and Strategy Maps. You'll love all three!

The text that brought performance measurement to the fore, 04 Jun 2002
One of the classic texts of the 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard has brought the importance of performance measurement to a generation of managers. It's still a worthwhile read, although more recent models, like the Performance Prism by Neely, seem much broader in scope.

A big disappointment, 01 Sep 1999
This book does not deliver on the expectations built by the initial Balanced Scorecard articles. It does very little to clarify and structure the concept and approach to building a Balanced Scorecard. There are a few interesting ideas but they get lost in a repetitive and hard to read text.

Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants, 11 Jul 1999
A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.

The Perilous "Journey" to Breakthrough Performance, 25 Jul 2006

If you have not already read Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scoreboard, I presume to suggest that you do so prior to reading this book. However, this sequel is so thoughtful and well-written that it can certainly be of substantial value to decision-makers in any organization (regardless of size or nature) which is determined to "thrive in the new business environment." Research data suggest that only 5% of the workforce understand their company's strategy, that only 25% of managers have incentives linked to strategy, that 60% of organizations don't link budgets to strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy. These and other research findings help to explain why Kaplan and Norton believe so strongly in the power of the Balanced Scorecard. As they suggest, it provides "the central organizing framework for important managerial processes such as individual and team goal setting, compensation, resource allocation, budgeting and planning, and strategic feedback and learning." After rigorous and extensive research of their own, obtained while working closely with several dozen different organizations, Kaplan and Norton observed five common principles of a Strategy-Focused Organization:

1. Translate the strategy to operational terms

2. Align the organization to the strategy

3. Make strategy everyone's job

4. Make strategy a continual process

5. Mobilize change through executive leadership

The first four principles focus on the the Balanced Scorecard tool, framework, and supporting resources; the importance of the fifth principle is self-evident. "With a Balanced Scorecard that tells the story of the strategy, we now have a reliable foundation for the design of a management system to create Strategy-Focused Organizations."

After two introductory chapters, the material is carefully organized and developed within five