Viewing Category: Reporting
[
clear category selection]
(displaying entries
1 - 20)
The development team is putting the finishing touches on by far the largest iteration of the ESM6 build, measures. Pure agile gurus would have encouraged us to break this iteration up into 8 separate iterations given its size but because of our skilled developers, we were able to still pull off a long but very successful build! Unlimited data series, Excel based tables, in line data field calculations with compatible Excel fields, automatic target schedule setting, multiple measure charts per data set, data sourcing, and excel input/output for easy data management in ESM6 make this our biggest achievement yet.
Historically, ESM required final calculated numbers such as a target, actual, variance, and forecast. With ESM 6, if desired, those raw data calculations can be done right in ESM or easily sourced in from excel by the end user. We will also enable period groups for month to date, quarter to date and year to date summary series. This means you can track your total performance for a period in time without manual computations. Our measure charting enhancements should remove any restrictions users have felt in the past with complex measure calculations, roll up, and visual charting. We are very excited to get this out into beta testing later in 2012. Get ready!
[hide extended entry]
Imagine your strategic elements (themes, objectives, measures, driver measures, initiatives, initiative KPIs, and milestones) as an alignment “web” or “family tree” through which there are causal relationships. While some of these relationships are close, say 50-75% of their performance feed into the next element’s performance, others are distant, and perhaps say only have a 3-5% impact on another element from the same scorecard or from a cascaded scorecard. If there were only a way to represent that impact that would be wicked cool.
Now there is. The team has completed the build out of the ESM6 automatic performance status indicator setting iteration. If you want to in ESM6, you can activate this capability to have milestones and initiative KPI performance feed into the overall initiative performance. Initiative performance can then feed up into objective level performance. Similarly, driver measure and cascaded measure performance can feed up into strategic measures from both a performance status indicator level and at the raw data level. Strategic measures, cascaded objectives, and initiative performance indicators can then feed up into objectives and finally, objectives into themes. The ESM team is getting ready to automate your performance status indicators. Are you? We look forward to sharing this new capability with you soon.
[hide extended entry]
It really is that simple. You need the right people engaged and supporting the cause within the organization, you need the process in place to ensure youa re taking the right steps in the strategy management framework, and you need to accelerate your time to results while making the effort sustainable through technology. I'll go over the role of each below.
A. People: Leadership
- Communicates vision, values, and mission to inspire the organization to perform
- Makes the case for change so the organization is dissatisfied with the status quo
- Clarifies the strategic intent to signal the direction in which the organization should move
- Build consensus in the management team to empower them to drive the strategy to results
- Lead by example to embody the kind of behaviors that others must adopt to succeed
B: Process: Office of Strategy Management (OSM)
- Makes strategy management a core competency within your organization to achieve results
· Coordinates cross-business processes to align businesses across the enterprise
· Ensures sustainability of the strategy management system—to survive churn at the top of the organization and adapt to changing economic environment
· Manages strategic risk factors that have strategic relevance
· Achieves strategic synergy across the enterprise
C: Infrastructure/Technology
- Develops common platforms and systems that enable effective integration of businesses
- Implements architecture and tools that automate performance management capabilities
- Cascades strategy maps and scorecards down to individuals to align the entire organization
- Captures and analysis data and information that enables better decision making
- Integrates the management process with technology to link strategy and operations
[hide extended entry]
Now that the Execution Premium book by Drs. Kaplan and Norton has been out in the market for a number of years, let's take a look at the benefits that can be realized through the XPP implementation in your organizaiton. Let's take it a couple stages at a time. Stage 1 and 2 looked at Develop the Strategy and Translate the Strategy, stages 3 and 4: Align the Organization with the Strategy and 4: Plan Operations. Now let's look at stages 5: Monitor and Learn and 6: Test and Adapt. In these last two stages, strategy becomes part of the fabric of the organization's management process and governance model right alongside operational review meetings. A business intelligence capability nees to be formalized and linked to the strategy. As part of testing the strategy, new insights should be shared, and strategic and operational processes can be altered to ensure maximum effectiveness. This feedback loop brings you back to strategy refresh, translation and alignment, thus closing the loop on the XPP management system. Some of the benefits realized in these final stages include:
STAGE 5: MONITOR AND LEARN
- Develops a BI competency center to assure accurate, timely data to improve decision making
- Develops an analytic information architecture to harness data, information, and insight
- Creates a governance process and calendar to manage strategy as a process that delivers results
- Conducts strategy and operational review meetings to ensure strategy execution is on track
STAGE 6: TEST AND ADAPT
- Confirms effectiveness of the strategy
- Models business and operational processes to optimize ability to execute the strategy
- Analyzes results in order to make necessary modifications to achieve performance outcomes. Provides direction on what is working and what needs improvement
[hide extended entry]
Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
Decision Making,
ESM General Information,
Initiative Management,
Innovation,
Reporting,
Sustainability
|
Posted
9/14/11
@ 3:42 PM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Now that the Execution Premium book by Drs. Kaplan and Norton has been out in the market for a number of years, let's take a look at the benefits that can be realized through the XPP implementation in your organizaiton. Let's take it a couple stages at a time. Stage 1 and 2 looked at Develop the Strategy and Translate the Strategy. Now let's look at stages 3 and 4: Align the Organization With the Strategy and 5: Plan Operations. In these stages, the strategy has been clarified with scorecards and strategy maps at the enterprise level so now they need to be cascaded down into the business and support areas to ensure vertical alignment. Individuals might employ personal Balanced Scorecards and development plans to link the performance review process with the strategy. A communication program around the strategy is also paramount. The organization can begin to link strategy to key processes, driver models, and dashboards. Rolling forecasts and dynamic resource allocation are often found around the operational planning step.
STAGE 3: ALIGN THE ORGANIZATION WITH THE STRATEGY
- Defines the corporate role so that organizational units receive strategic guidance & direction
- Cascades strategy maps and scorecards to ensure organizational alignment to the strategy
- Leverages synergies between corporate, SBU, shared services, and other units to ensure alignment
- Communicates the strategy so that everyone understands his/her role in executing it
- Aligns team and individual goals and incentives to ensure the behavioral changes required for success
STAGE 4: PLAN OPERATIONS
- Identifies critical processes required to execute the strategy
- Establishes cross-functional business teams to drive performance across organizational boundaries
- Develops rolling forecasts and dynamic resource allocation to link strategy and operations
- Implements driver based planning to identify the critical levers of performance
- Creates operational dashboards that identify the key performance indicators that drive performance
[hide extended entry]
Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
Decision Making,
ESM Development Team,
ESM Features,
ESM General Information,
ESM Tips and Tricks,
Initiative Management,
Innovation,
Operational Reporting,
Personal Balanced Scorecard,
Reporting,
Risk Management,
Software as a Service,
Strategy Maps,
Sustainability
|
Posted
9/7/11
@ 2:25 PM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Now that the Execution Premium book by Drs. Kaplan and Norton has been out in the market for a number of years, let's take a look at the benefits that can be realized through the XPP implementation in your organizaiton. Let's take it a couple stages at a time. Stage 1 and 2 of 6: Develop the Strategy and Translate the Strategy. These stages are where the organization performs S.W.O.T. analysis, Gap and shift statements, identifies key overarching strategies, clarifies the mission and vision and key risks. Then the strategy is developed into Balanced Scorecards and strategy maps. Typically an Office of Strategy Management (OSM) or other like group/individual is tapped to manage the strategy implementation and execution.
STAGE 1: DEVELOP THE STRATEGY
- Defines how shareholder value will be created to achieve new levels of performance
- Identifies required changes from current to future state so the organization understands it
- Quantifies vision, values, mission, objectives, and risks so they are measurable
- Analyzes strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to determine course of action
- Formulates strategy so that the entire organization can execute it
STAGE 2: TRANSLATE THE STRATEGY
- Clarifies strategy with a strategy map to produce a one-page action plan that works
- Develops a Balanced Scorecard to specify objectives, targets, measures, and initiatives
- Identifies key risk indicators that must be managed to avoid failure to execute
- Focuses on initiatives with the greatest impact to accelerate time to results
- Allocates resources dynamically to produce the most effective outcomes
[hide extended entry]
Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
ESM Features,
Initiative Management,
Innovation,
Operational Reporting,
Personal Balanced Scorecard,
Reporting,
Strategy Maps,
Sustainability
|
Posted
8/31/11
@ 3:19 PM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Judging from recent interviews and articles, it appears Balanced Scorecard co-creator Bob Kaplan’s new favorite case study is Volkswagen Brazil. In particular, he is impressed with the company's ability to communicate strategy to its 22,000 employees.
Kaplan is particularly charmed by a Volkswagen robot that roams the corporate premises and “talks” to employees about strategy. Giga, who has the face of a VW Beetle’s hood and wheels as feet, makes star appearances at employee gatherings and also shows up in comic strips to affirm strategic goals for employees.
This thoughtful and creative approach to strategy communications humanizes the idea of strategy, makes it fun and accessible, and gets people talking about it. It has also contributed to a cultural change inside the company, which, in turn, enabled a major financial turnaround.
For companies that can't afford to build a robot, there is a less expensive and more interactive approach available—if interactivity is measured by the vibrancy of human-to-human, rather than human-to-robot, dialogue. With the right selection of social media tools, you can leverage your corporate intranet (or a 3rd party platform) and raise strategy communications to a whole new level. Let’s look at some of the more common social media tools to see how they can be used in the strategy communication process:
Blogs… for Strategy Execution
According to Wikipedia, “Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.” If the purpose of your strategy communication intranet is to communicate strategy, you don’t want to let every employee blog on it (just as you wouldn’t let every employee on stage at a company meeting to discuss strategy). Only your CEO and other executives responsible for communicating strategic objectives should launch a blog series under the banner of strategy communications. Depending on how “young-at-heart” your executives are, they may create and post the blogs themselves. More likely, your communications department will manage the operations of the blog. For example, if an executive is more comfortable speaking than writing, your communication team can film him and post the video entries as a video blog.
Online Discussions…for Strategy Execution
Company employees can comment on executive blogs, but the primary purpose of the strategy blog is for leaders to broadcast the message to the field. An online discussion forum is different. Discussion forums are inherently a more democratic, interactive form of exchange. There is an expectation that the person who begins the discussion will carefully listen to responses and continue to engage as the discussion unfolds. The best discussions begin with an honest question and an appeal for help. These forum discussions are the perfect complement to a more structured application for Balanced Scorecard creation and control.
Private Groups Collaboration…for Strategy Execution
You might not be ready to communicate the strategy to the entire organization. For example, Scott Nadler describes ERM’s strategic communication program in stages, starting with a private discussion between a dozen executive insiders, then to a group of 40, and finally to all 3,000 at the company. The access rights to your online collaboration space should mirror this off-line reality. For example, you might choose to launch a private group for the 40 people inside your own intranet or as a private subgroup in a more public community such as Palladium XPC.
In summary, you have a great new set of inexpensive social tools to help you communicate strategy. If they are deployed carelessly, they will be a waste of time and a distraction. However, with the right matching of specific social tools and oversight to keep the discussions focused, you will find an effective new communication program. This channel will only become more powerful – even transformative -- as more “digital natives” come into the organization.
[hide extended entry]
Despite its value, most organizations' written, objective-level performance analysis is generally not very good. Most performance analysis does not explain the data, discuss its underlying causes and implications, or integrate it into a broader discussion of strategic performance and environmental trends. My recent reading of strategy review reports of a handful of Palladium Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy® organizations proved to me that even exemplars of strategy execution sometimes fall short in their written performance analysis, thus missing valuable opportunities.
Fortunately, this problem can be remedied. Writing insightful, actionable performance analysis is a skill that can be learned. Through Palladium's work guiding dozens of organizations in strategy reporting, we've identified several common pitfalls in performance analysis that performance analysis writers need to learn to avoid.
Pitfall 1: Focusing Only on the Measure Data, without Explaining or Interpreting
Often, performance analysis merely regurgitates what the data already show, or simply explains the components of the corresponding measure(s). What good does that do? Analysis writers need to dig deeper for more contextual data that might explain the performance. What is the reason for the last period's measure performance? How do we explain any period to period trends? What does the measure's outcome tell you about the performance of its corresponding objective?
Pitfall #2: Omitting Qualitative Information
Numbers are concrete, and objective, and therefore make people more comfortable and confident. But they don't tell the whole story. And they can indeed mislead, whether inadvertently or not (think of all the ways statistics can be presented to support any side of an argument). Qualitative information can often reveal the reasons behind the numbers better than the deepest dive into the detailed data can. It would seem self-evident that qualitative information is a critical element for understanding what drives performance. Yet far too often, such information is absent in written analysis.
Pitfall #3: Ignoring the Reasons for the Performance Result
Sometimes all the analysis in the world won't yield a definitive explanation for a performance result. Yet even when there is no certain answer, it is always better to offer a hypothesis than to forgo explanation altogether. For decision makers, there is little that is more unsatisfying than to ask “Why” and be told “I have no idea.” Offering a thoughtful educated guess will at least get the conversation started.
Pitfall #4: Avoiding Any Discussion of Risk
No one likes to be the messenger of bad news, but addressing risk openly and accurately is the key to avoiding unexpected declines in performance and greater risk. Even in our age of heightened risk awareness, risk and strategy are still often viewed as separate areas, one involving all that could go wrong, and the other, all that an organization hopes for. In reality, the two are inextricably linked. The strategy represents a hypothesis of the way the business operates and what activities are crucial to attain the ultimate desired outcome. Each strategic objective is achieved by successfully managing its performance drivers. Since it's a given that there are specific risks that can impede each performance driver; why would such risks not be part of the strategic conversation?
Pitfall #5: Focusing on Details at the Expense of the Bigger Picture
For any number of reasons, performance analysis writers often delve into one aspect of an objective’s performance, overlooking the objective-level view. In fact, it is not uncommon for performance analysis to not even indicate whether the objective is being achieved. Writers must step back from all of the quantitative and qualitative data they have collected and approach objective-level performance analysis by first drafting a summary statement about the objective's overall performance.
To read the full length article, log into the ESM, select Resources: Libraries: BSR: Complete Issues: and select the following issues.
David McMillan, “Five Pitfalls of Writing Performance Analysis,” Balanced Scorecard Report, November – December 2010
…or…
David McMillan, with Barnaby Donlon, “How to Write Performance Analysis That Truly Enhances Decision Making,” Balanced Scorecard Report, November – December 2008
[hide extended entry]
The ESM team is hard at work innovating, designing and building ESM 6. This effort began in February 2010 and will continue through to Beta launch in early 2012. Through our recent surveys, direct client requests, and guidance from Drs. Kaplan and Norton and Palladium’s strategy consulting experts, we’ve compiled over 200 potential enhancements to include in this release.
As our developers share these new enhancements with the larger ESM team, we get more and more excited about where the ESM community is pushing the application. After all, it is you, the client, who’s advancing our application as you use it in your organization and provide us with feedback.
Some of the latest features to be built include automatic status indicator roll up across the scorecard. For example, milestone performance status indicator can impact the overall initiative status indicator, which in turn impacts objective performance status indicator. Objective status indicators can also automatically set based off of cascaded objectives and underlying measures. Measure can be automatically set by either data roll up or status color roll up. Objectives then roll up into perspectives and themes and then ultimately into an overall scorecard performance. It will be up to you if you activate this feature and just how far you want automatic status color setting to go in your organization.
We’ve also seen a new measure charting interface, allowing for unlimited data series, data calculations between columns, and multiple charts that can be displayed against the same measure data set. We will enable much more complex data roll up since different underlying measure series can feed into various higher level measures. For example, historically ESM required final calculated numbers such as a target, actual, variance, and forecast. With ESM 6, if desired, those raw data calculations can be done right in ESM or sourced in from data sources or data bases. We will also enable period groups for month to date, quarter to date and year to date summary series. Our measure charting enhancements should remove any restrictions users have felt in the past with complex measure calculations, roll up, and visual charting.
As we continue our development efforts we look forward to sharing our development efforts with you.
[hide extended entry]
Palladium’s research also involved surveying 101 organizations representing a wide range of industries in order to explore the relationship between their management practices and the performance results they have achieved. Among our most important findings:
IT, if aligned well with strategy, plays a very significant role in determining the ultimate chance of execution success. Integrated, end-to-end software solutions, together with operations governed by robust strategy management systems, constitute a proven method by which organizations and their entire business networks can achieve the Execution Premium. This Palladium white paper reviews the methodology used to align strategy to operations, drills into the three components of operational excellence and walks through how the 6 stage Execution Premium model can help organizations achieve healthy operational alignment. View this and other white papers at Palladium’s white paper site.
[hide extended entry]
I just came across an excellent account of the Balanced Scorecard effort undergone at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In this paper, BSC champion and strategy director, Alasdair Macnab, along with Chris Carr and Falconer Michell from University of Edinburgh tell the implementation story. They focus their research on how the Balanced Scorecard approach can be successfully adopted for nonprofit businesses. The team also reviews why the Executive Strategy Manager was selected as the preferred solution and how it streamlined the data reporting and presentation while providing leadership and employees froma cross the organization critical line of sight into the strategy.
Key findings cited from the paper include:
Just as strategies are specific to an organisation, the balanced scorecard (BSC)/strategy map can and should be adapted to suit an individual organisation to leverage the full power of the BSC system.
• The effort and commitment required from senior management involved in transforming strategy management processes should not be underestimated as individuals/departments will become more accountable for their actions, particularly in the public sector, and resistance to change may be experienced as a consequence.
• If an effective costing system is developed, such as the one described in this report, management will see how their staff are directing their efforts, particularly important in knowledge based organisations.
• With their intimate knowledge of the organisation, the management accountant is well placed to become very involved or direct the transformation process to manage strategy execution leading to improved effectiveness/profitability of the organisation. In this way the management accountant becomes more of a strategic partner to the business.
• The research relates primarily to the practitioner who should find it helpful as the work is based on research subject to academic rigour but is translated into a pragmatic approach via the case study; thereby demonstrating its usefulness to a real organisation.
See:” Implementation of the balanced scorecard and an alternative costing system at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh,” available at the following link:
Access the full report here
[hide extended entry]
Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
Decision Making,
ESM Development Team,
ESM Features,
ESM General Information,
ESM Tips and Tricks,
Initiative Management,
Operational Reporting,
Reporting,
Risk Management,
Software as a Service,
Strategy Maps,
Sustainability
|
Posted
7/22/10
@ 11:43 AM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Captain Earl Armbruster: You almost tore that boy's arm off!
Action Jackson: So? He had a spare.
As a Palladium consultant helping clients implement the Balanced Scorecard, I've had my share of meetings where I've felt like my arm was being torn off. And the next three hours seemed like one of those meetings. I booted up my laptop, straightened my tie, and said to myself "How would Action Jackson handle this?"
We were preparing for an upcoming Strategy Review Meeting and the day's agenda including reviewing over 70 measures with the reporting team. While this activity was necessary, and part of our methodology, I was not looking forward to the additional work I knew the meeting would generate.
I was going to use ESM to step through each measure, review the graphs, and look for common mistakes like missing titles, incorrect axis labels, and confusing color schemes. My plan was to write each discrepancy in my notebook and spend the evening in my hotel room transcribing the notes, sending individual emails to the reporting team, and creating a simple spreadsheet to track the follow-up activities. If I was lucky, and the mistakes were limited, I might be able to skip dinner and finish before midnight.
Fortunately, our ESM Consultant was onsite to assist. She introduced me to a new feature in ESM – Action Items – that not only made the meeting run better but gave me enough time to eat dinner and get a good night's sleep.
Action Items are automated reminders, or "ticklers," accessible from the Meeting View screens. Clicking the "Add Action Item" icon brings up a window allowing you to create an action item associated with a particular measure, objective, or initiative. The template can be completed quickly, and is automatically associated with the owner of the component. When that owner logs into ESM, the Action Items are displayed on his or her dashboard along with the relevant due-dates.
We used this feature extensively throughout the review meeting; capturing specific follow-up items quickly and easily with no need for reminder emails. Accountability was improved; there was no longer the excuse of "I didn't get your email..." The resulting list of Action Items can even be sorted, to help with project management tracking.
The team completed their action items and the review meeting went exceptionally well. Chalk up another time-saving ESM success!
[hide extended entry]
After the first day of ESM training in Nairobi, Kenya, I turned to my new colleague and hesitantly confessed. "You know, when I first heard I would be coming to a company called 'Safaricom,'..."
She turned to me with a knowing smile. "A safari is not just a holiday to witness the glory of the wild; it is also a journey." She continued, "Safaricom accompanies its customers on their life's journey with mobile services anytime and anywhere."
Her words were perfectly chosen, yet did not sound rehearsed. Instead, they captured the passion I heard for the company's vision; a vision that incorporates Safaricom's goals with a rich metaphor for African culture.
And I heard this passion – consistently – from everyone I spoke to on my trip.
With such consistent passion across the organization, it's no wonder that Safaricom, Kenya's leading mobile operator, has been one of Africa's great success stories. They are the biggest company in East Africa, with a six hundred-fold growth rate and a market share of 80%. This 80% figure is incredible; Safaricom's subscriber base grew from 20,000 to 12 million between 2000 and 2008.
They have been successful but realize that continued success is truly a journey. And to help them on that journey, they've adopted the Balanced Scorecard approach to prioritize their activities and ensure sustainability of their growth into the future.
The Safaricom leadership team realized that the passion behind their vision statement, so prevalent throughout the company, was a huge asset that could be leveraged as they deployed their strategy. And they were determined to make this deployment consistent and accurate throughout the organization. They realized that a strong framework, like the Balanced Scorecard, coupled with an effective tool, like ESM, would give them the vehicle they needed for this important journey.
I enjoyed working with the Safaricom team and shared best-practices in three areas: strategic messaging, actionable movement, and ongoing motivation. Or, more simply: >> Get the message across >> Make it happen >> Keep it going
To provide a Kilimanjaro-level overview:
Strategic Messaging: The ESM serves as a feedback mechanism, reporting on the carefully-selected components that reflect the strategic intent of the executive team. Everyone in the organization – from front-line workers up to the executives – can answer the question "How are we doing on what's important?"
The ESM helps answer this question by providing access to everyone in the organization. Employees have read-only access to the strategy and the objectives, while Scorecard owners can actively update the performance of their initiatives, measures, objectives, and themes.
Actionable Movement: Knowing the strategy is one thing; to ensure the journey is successful Safaricom must not only monitor the dials, but move the dials on their scorecard. The ESM facilitates the analysis necessary to achieve this movement and enables ongoing understanding of the activities required to align the work and attain the goals.
One especially-useful function within ESM is Action Items. Action Items can be used as a tracking device to ensure that commitments made in strategy review meetings are kept and that progress is taking place. The use of Action Items dramatically improves meeting productivity by empowering individuals to capture, distribute, archive, and manage all information associated with meetings. ESM allows users to easily assign and track Action Items.
Ongoing Motivation: Strategy review meetings provide the opportunity to assess progress, and the ESM can be used to ensure that action occurs between meetings. But it's important to maintain that progress on a continual basis – keeping everyone in the company motivated and aligned with the long-term goals.
Two ESM features can help maintain this motivation by maximizing the engagement of all Safaricom personnel. The Alignment tab shows how every aspect of the strategy aligns to other things within the organization. This is a powerful, visual way for everyone to see how their work impacts others, and forces accountability for overall performance. And Personal Balanced Scorecards drive the strategy down to the individual level, allowing everyone to know exactly how their daily jobs affect and contribute to the success of the company.
An African proverb states "For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." Safaricom is actively preparing for their journey to tomorrow, and it should be a successful one.
[hide extended entry]
In trying times like these many organizations fight to change strategy to adapt to new economic conditions. While these changes in strategic direction have clear implications for high-level objectives, management teams must also turn this strategy into unit and individual level action. Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard methodology operates on the theory that while strategy is translated top-down, the real business value comes from bottom-up execution of strategy. The Executive Strategy Manager enables strategy execution by helping companies to translate strategy throughout the organization into day-to-day operations.
The Executive Strategy Manager delivers rich features that support the accountability, collaboration, and communication of your organization's performance and strategy. The application's user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it ideal for strategy managers and executives alike; there is no need for specially trained IT support. By putting the right information at your finger tips, static performance data is transformed into actionable knowledge, enabling real-time decisions that drive results. The ESM is shaping the way organizations efficiently manage, execute, and communicate strategy to achieve breakthrough results.
Click here to try the FREE TRIAL of the Executive Strategy Manager!
[hide extended entry]
With the release of the ESM 5.0, many in the team are testing various components of the application. I was testing some of the new copy forward capabilities today and wanted to share just how cool this enhancement is in the strategy reporting space.
The ESM 5.0 now has the ability to copy forward all performance status indicators and/or period specific reporting data with just one click. Drs. Kaplan and Norton were hesitant to add a function like this in the ESM to avoid the common pitfall we see with some scorecarding organizations: just one or two individuals update the report information for all the themes, objectives, measures and initiatives. These organizations are setting themselves up for failure because this structure conflicts with the natural change management aspect of scorecarding and strategy mapping. In the end this enhancement made the list because there are times when it's appropriate to copy forward entire sets of data to streamline the reporting cycle. Strategic elements that are on track might require minimal editing between reporting periods and can be copied forward to allow for more time spent on thoughtful analysis around off track items.
With the New Year, many organizations are refreshing their strategy maps, updating ownership, and establishing reporting cycles. You will be happy to learn that the ESM 5.0, due out in just a couple months, will make the ongoing management of your strategy that much easier.
[hide extended entry]
Many organizations elect to refresh their scorecards with the start of a new year. Regardless of when you do it, there are some considerations you should take into account prior to beginning the process.
If you are still closing out a prior reporting period, such as Q4 2008 or December 2008, you should not refresh your scorecard for 2009 in this same account. Remember that the ESM captures your active/live strategy so if you delete old objectives and measures, that data is gone forever. A better approach is to reach out to your ESM account representative and request to have your scorecards cloned into new accounts so that we can name one 2008 and one 2009. This will then allow you to continue to edit your 2008 performance data and close out on those strategic elements while also freeing up your scorecard for the edits necessary to prepare for 2009. Be sure to lock down unused reporting periods and effectively communicate to end users which scorecard they should go into to accomplish closing out the year versus refreshing the strategy.
Organizations that are complete with their 2008 reporting do not need to create scorecard clones. The process is as simple as creating a scorecard archive through the client administration area prior to refreshing your strategy for the coming year. This archive snapshot will reflect all the strategic elements from that point in time and serve as a reference in the future should you ever wish to look back.
Finally, if you are not making significant changes to your strategy at this time, you can consider things business as usual. Add in the January 2009, Q1 2009, etc reporting period and continue reporting on your scorecard.
[hide extended entry]
Companies have become overly reliant on Business Intelligence to focus decision making on results. While the reporting, query, and analytical tools are important to the success of a business, an accumulation can bog down the decision making process. Many companies are turning away from such BI-centric methodology and refocusing resources on Performance Management.
Performance Management provides decision makers only data which is relevant to the strategy of the company. This approach allows executives to focus on making timely evaluations with pertinent information. Dr. David Norton of the Palladium Group describes the delicate balance of combining strategy and operations as such: "If you don't link strategy and operations, then you're stuck in either a bottom-up world, where you're focusing on operations and you don't really have control of whether it's impacting the strategy, or you come top down and focus only on strategy, but you can't make things happen." Using Performance Management software like Palladium's Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) facilitates the active linking of strategy and operations. Businesses can use reports and analysis gathered by operations to drive successful strategic execution with the ESM.
Click here to read more about Performance Management in Doug Henschen's article "Decision Time."
[hide extended entry]
I've had a lot of organizations ask me how to "tell the story of their strategy" using their strategy map in the ESM as their guide. I'd like to provide our ESM community with an example approach that could be adapted for your organization. Once upon a time...
This strategy map tells the story of our strategy over the next 3-5 years. We believe that if we achieve these strategic objectives, we will achieve our strategic destination of becoming a XXX organization. (I often see a top level financial or stakeholder objective here. We regard the lower two perspectives as to what we are putting into the strategy and the top two perspectives as to what we are getting out of the strategy, our outcomes.
In order to achieve our strategic destination, we need to have the right people, skills, and culture (point to L&G perspective) to help us execute on our key internal business processes, organized by the following key themes (point to and say each theme). If we do these things internally, we believe we will successfully execute on our customer objectives--driving the customer outcomes we are looking for. Happy customers become repeat customers which become referrals to increase our customer base. Ultimately, this will drive healthy revenue growth (or the stakeholder outcomes you desire). And we always need to be cognizant of managing our operations (point to financial right side of the map).
Now that I've walked through the high level story of our strategy, allow me to now drill in on the cause and effect logic behind our objectives.
First, we have XXX key objectives that we've called out on our map to signify that they are absolutely critical to our success. Read each objective.
Within Learning and Growth perspective we have the following objectives.....these drive each of our themes internally. Within the first theme we have the following perspectives (work through the theme starting at the bottom and working your way up showing the cause and effect logic). Then do the remaining themes.
Move up to the customer perspective and if they are written in quotes, then say this is through the eyes of the customer. This is what they are looking for from us. Then read each objective.
Finally, present your financial objectives as the ultimate test if you are executing on your strategy.
Speak to how you measure success via measures that sit behind the strategy map (show the full BSC summary tab), with initiatives that are helping you close the gap between your current state and what you are trying to achieve.
Good luck.
[hide extended entry]
Did you know that the ESM can automatically evaluate the performance of your measures?
The attendees of our webinar on the Target Scheduler do!
Learn how to schedule threshold bands by period, so that when data is manually entered or sourced into the ESM, the performance color for that measure is automatically displayed.
Replay the session at https://breeze.palladiumes.com/p86173230/ or review the Target Scheduler reference guide in the FAQs and Help section of your account.
[hide extended entry]
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.
One framework in particular, that of the Balanced Scorecard, has gained sustainable ground since its introductions by Drs. Kaplan and Norton in 1992. In fact, the BSc has even been regarded as the single most important management tool in Western organization, so much so, that over 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies utilize the methodology.
The BSC methodology enables the translation of strategy into action by helping everyone in an organization to understand and work towards a shared vision. This, however, necessitates the establishment of a support infrastructure to integrate, access, and communicate relevant data to the right people.
Increasingly, companies are turning to IT solutions to facilitate information transparency and the decision making process. Automated software applications, such as the Executive Strategy Manager, can assist in BSC implementation in ways such as providing a visual representation of strategy, integrating and communicating information throughout all levels of the organization, and making strategy execution an ongoing process by providing a new framework for reporting and feedback.
Many companies, however, are still supporting their BSC implementation with unsophisticated solutions like simple spreadsheets or slideshows. Consequently, they may be afflicted by problems resultant of lacking scalability; labor intensity; collaboration limitations; and analytical impediments.
Selecting the wrong solution can result in a significant loss of time, energy and money, and more importantly, it can also undermine the entire BSC development effort. This brings rise to questions such as "How can my company extract the full benefits of the BSC model?" and "Can a technologically advanced solution, such as the ESM make a difference in the success rate of my BSC implementation and work?"
These questions, and more, will be addressed in future installments; based on the findings referenced in the August 4th blog post titled "Independent Study Confirms: ESM Will Help You Succeed!"
[hide extended entry]
