In today's demand-driven and increasingly competitive market; the need for effective strategic management is imperative. This need has spurred the conceptualization of several management theories. Naturally, as delivery on promise differed, some have fared better than others.

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One commonality I see with all successful strategy management programs is an emphasis around communicating the Balanced Scorecard and overall strategic destination to all employees in the organization. I see some organizations struggle from one reporting period to another with trying to keep all the scorecard data up to date.

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After nearly 10 years in the strategy space certifying many of the big name business intelligence software vendors out there for their Balanced Scorecard module (meaning that their business performance management software meets the minimum standards for building and managing scorecards), I've formulated a concrete opinion on how most differ from the Executive Strategy Manager. I've seen cases where both types of applications are needed, neither is needed, and just one will meet the needs of the organization.

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Drs. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton just published the Harvard Business Review Article "Mastering the Management System". The article begins by stating the challenge faced by most organizations: separating the operational management meeting from the strategy management meeting. Beyond the creation of strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards, the BSC co-founders profess a link from strategy to operations, which might be in the form of key process management, key process decomposition, activity based costing, analytical dashboards and more.

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I have an organization who is considering the ESM and wants me to build out some example reporting views with their content. This is a common request that we field with potential ESM clients who already have a scorecard in place. Naturally, they want to see what their reporting environment will look like before they commit to a new application.

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OK, so I came up with a suitable trendline for my measure in the last post, but the proof of concept also asked for a 12 month forecast of this measure. The challenge with a forecast is also that it depends on several factors.

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I recently was asked to build a proof of concept in the ESM that showed the trends for measures and then a forecast for 12 months in the future. I was not given much information to start with, but as I researched it, I realized that companies trying to do this have a few challenges on their hands.

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Report Frequently

I am an advocate of holding brief reporting meetings at the end of the first and second month of each quarter (focusing on key initiatives or poor performing areas) and then holding a full strategy review meeting immediately after quarter close.

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So you've been reading articles on the BSC Hall of Fame for 7 years now and you're trying to figure out how they do it. How have these organizations been able to go the distance with their strategy management program? Here are some key steps to take to ensure your project survives the transition from development to execution and beyond.

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We mentally prepared ourselves for a photo finish. We ran through all the possible race scenarios. We were all but sure the race would come down to the last few strokes. We were wrong. At the 800 meter mark, I looked across the course and counted 4 boats. I counted again and again to make sure my mind was not playing tricks on me. We had open water on China, Greece, Slovenia, and Belgium and we were a seat up on the Ukrainians. We had only rowed in our line-up for a month and we executed our strategy. We were going to the Olympics!

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While there are a lot of early wins that the Balanced Scorecard provides (i.e., eliminating or consolidating redundant initiatives, getting everyone reading from the same playbook, actually articulating the strategy, etc.), the real power of the Balanced Scorecard comes over time.

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