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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
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Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
Decision Making,
ESM General Information,
Initiative Management,
Innovation,
Reporting,
Sustainability
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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
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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
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Posted
9/7/11
@ 2:25 PM
by ESM Team ESM Team
ESM continues to make it's mark on earth, positively impacting governments and private organizations around the world with their ability to execute strategy.
The purpose of our trip to Kuwait was to install ESM, interface with government leadership, discuss project objectives, and create alignment between the process and technology so that the government is positioned well for success. Although the Balanced Scorecard and ESM has been heavily used within governments around the world, there have been very few implementations for the entire country's government. Kuwait Government is on the Vanguard with strategy execution and with it's implementation of the Balanced Scorecard program.
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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.
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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
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Executives from 200 companies worldwide were asked how effectively they were meeting the financial projections set forth in their strategic plans: the results were staggering. On average, companies only reach about 60% of the potential financial performance promised!
In “Leveraging Planning Processes to Bridge Strategy and Execution”, the author Philip Peck argues that a disconnect lies between strategic and operational planning. To bridge the gap between strategy and execution, it is imperative that the processes, while different in approach, are integrated, aligned, and well synchronized.
According to Peck, the barriers to resource allocation are ingrained in a company’s organizational structure, processes, and information technology.
Strategic planning involves changing the business and looking ahead long term; while operational planning focuses on running the baseline business efficiently and effectively, with a shorter resource allocation timeframe. The antidote to bridge the gap and achieve financial success requires a holistic approach to the planning processes. Peck highlights four key areas where strategic and operational processes connect and offers concrete models to help organizations develop an integrated planning process.
View this, and other Palladium White Papers, HERE.
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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
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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
How can your organization make better decisions during tough economic times? In an article entitled, "Smarter Execs Focus on Goals, Not Just Metrics," Doug Henschen describes the growing importance of decision based analytics. How are the most decision-support savvy execs doing it?
The answer comes in a four step process:
1) Start with organizational goals. 2) Create metrics that monitor those goals. 3) Provide analysis of the metrics. 4) Make better decisions!
A decision support interface can be helpful to track the performance trends of your organizations predefined goal. The data is not enough; rather the value comes from the Performance Analysis and Recommendations. Often times, organizations become victims to dashboard style interfaces that reflect data without analysis. The mistake comes in monitoring the data as a day to day indicator of the health of the business rather than the performance of it. Without strategy or goal orientation an organization is subject to share incorrect measures and ultimately fails to identify those areas that are under performing.
Here's a tip on how the ESM can help your organization focus on the goals, not just the metrics. My ESM was designed to provide easy access to strategic measures along with their performance analysis and recommendations, in an individually configurable view. Executives can log into the system and immediately see metrics of interest and their performance against the goals. With our roll-over functionality each measure is complete with a performance analysis and recommendation for each reporting period. Management teams that make use of the data through analysis and recommendations, have proven to make decisions that improve efficiency, develop innovative products, get closer to customers and outsell competitors.
To read more about the success of organizations like Fortune 10's Valero, Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame winners, and Johnson & Johnson, in their decision making: Click here to read the full article.
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Accounting for risk has become a hot topic in strategy management over the last year as organizations struggle through annual strategy refreshes in these turbulent times. This has raised the topic of how to address these risks within the balanced scorecard methodology, and ultimately, how to include the management of risk in your ESM implementation.
A strategic risk is the threat or possibility that an action or event will adversely affect the firm's ability to achieve its objectives. These risks are large enough that they should be managed on the strategic level, and in the balanced scorecard that means we need ways of measuring our exposure, assigning scarce resources to mitigation, and periodically reporting on exposure and progress.
Several of my recent clients have struggled with how best to include strategic risks in their monthly strategy review meetings while, as best practices demonstrate, keeping all the information within ESM itself. Based on feedback from those clients and other consultants and members attending Palladium's annual Strategic Risk Conference, we have designed the following approach.
Risk spans the entire scorecard and every theme, so it makes sense to establish a 'Risk' perspective in addition to the traditional perspectives. Into this new perspective go objectives for each risk, ideally prefixed similar to 'Risk 1: Overexposure to currency fluctuations'.
Treating risks as objectives allows us to select measures, establish ownership, align initiatives and report on status just like any other objective. The different perspective serves to keep these separate from traditional objectives. To illustrate the alignment of Risks to Objectives, we use the Cause and Effect functionality in ESM. Each risk objective is listed as a 'Cause' of an objective, this way when you are reporting on the objectives ESM will list out the risks aligned as 'Causes' with a status indicator and link.
This approach allows you to adequately address the impact of risk on your strategy and ensure that you are regularly evaluating your exposure to the most serious dangers. Aligning initiatives demonstrates that effort is being placed on mitigation and that mitigation itself is being regularly reviewed.
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A recent post about hospitals on Harvard Business Publishing's blog is a good example of how organizational evaluation in general and best practice sharing in particular are great ways to minimize waste and mistakes. In the case of hospitals, this can save lives. Author David Champion describes hospitals that created initiatives to reduce infections, create saftey checklists, and overall, looked for ways to implement best practices. Hospitals found that by implementing these ideas and changing behavior throughout their organization, they saved money and lives.
Palladium and the ESM have a long history of working with hospitals and others in the healthcare industry to achieve their goals. The Executive Strategy Manager is a great platform for identifying organizational shortcomings, and for creating and executing initiatives designed to mitigate these shortcomings. The ESM is also a great tool for conveying best practices as described in
this earlier blog posting . Professionals in the healthcare industry can design their scorecards and strategy maps to reflect the objectives and methods they believe best, and measure their success. In times like these when organizations are short on cash, identifying simple and cheap ways to minimize cost are critical.
You can read the article here .
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Rather than simply thinking about risk as a hazard to be avoided – a natural disaster or a fluctuation in the market or currency – companies should also think of risk as the flip side of the coin that is opportunity. This is the contention of a recent article on Harvard Business Publishing's website (they are also the publisher of the Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard Report). Identifying strategic risk can allow companies to calculate how to advance in certain aspects of their business. Understanding it can help organizations to decide such things as what products their customers want, whether they should acquire another company, whether to pursue strategic alliances, or whether pursue a newly identified niche in the marketplace.
The article discusses several methods of strategic risk management, such as "double betting" to minimize the risk of obsolescence, and helping customers control their own risks. It is easy to imagine how an organization might use the Executive Strategy Manager's software for creating Balanced Scorecards to help identify key risk factors and opportunities. Possible strategic objectives could include "Manage Risk", "Identify Potential New Markets" or "Develop Alliances". Initiatives could stress such things as collection of client feedback, research and development, or fraud detection as ways to gauge and adjust to a changing marketplace. This will allow executives to see risk in a broader view as part of the overall organizational strategy, while also driving the execution of the strategy on the part of managers.
Click here to read the article.
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In tough economic times like these, strategy becomes the central focus for organizations looking to adapt. While the focus is on developing the most savvy strategy for the economic environment, this philosophy often leaves out emphasis on execution. The distinction between companies who survive and go under during these trying times is often based on their ability to effectively execute strategy. According to Melissa Raffoni, the three keys to strategy execution are: communicate the key points, develop tracking systems that facilitate problem solving, and set up formal reviews.
The Executive Strategy Manager helps organizations drive their business strategy by following these three areas of emphasis. The ESM drives communication by providing accountability with each strategic objective by linking users to their pertinent objectives. Using the line of sight created by the strategy map with status indicators in the ESM, organizations can push the focus of their meetings to troubled areas of the scorecard. The ESM also steers organizations towards strategy execution using formal reviews in two ways: synchronized periods and Personal Balanced Scorecards. Synchronized reporting periods provide an even timetable for evaluation across a scorecard, setting up formal reviews throughout an organization. Personal Balanced Scorecards layout objectives on an individual basis, helping to both communicate strategy as well as drive formal reviews on a periodic basis. The Executive Strategy Manager works to drive effective strategy execution using these three key points, a critical tool in this economy. To learn more or sign up for a free trial follow the below link:
Click here to learn more!
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A company's success is often determined by their ability to adapt to a changing environment. While many companies will recognize the need for change, 70% of organizational transformations fail. Jayme de Lima says this failure comes from lacking employee commitment, as written in his article "Managing Change: Winning Hearts and Minds." A lack of downward communication in an organization hinders employee understanding on a personal level, which creates difficulty when trying to win over employees. Palladium's Executive Strategy Manager helps users communicate corporate ideology throughout an organization by aligning each employee with new corporate strategy.
Companies who lack a systematic change management program often lose steam with strategic initiatives before they begin to take root. By implementing the Balanced Scorecard Concept (BSC), companies provide concrete business goals throughout the organization. With a new goal in place for their business unit or management team, employees can see how company-wide transformations affect their day to day operations. The Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) provides the perfect tool for creating alignment during change in an organization. The ESM uses interactive tools to allow employees to track their contributions to the greater corporation's. Some of these tools include Personal Balanced Scorecards for individuals, cascaded scorecards from the corporate to business unit level, and My ESM to track employee goals that align with corporate strategy.
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Strategic Risk Management (SRM) is the key to an integrated risk management approach which Professor Mark Frigo discusses in his most recent article, "Strategic Risk Management: The New Core Competency." Professor Frigo sees the lagging development of SRM in a sea of new risks as the driving force behind the recent meltdown of financial markets. While companies focused on the upside of new business developments such as globalization and supply chain innovation, they made the fatal error of disregarding the associated risks. This evidence strengthens the need for a holistic approach to risk management in today's economy, an approach echoed by Frigo's emphasis on Strategic Risk Management within the Balanced Scorecard Concept.
One downfall found often in risk management approaches is a strictly siloed approach, where finance accounts for financial risks while HR manages their own risks. Though many companies strive for SRM, this movement has been hampered because "holistic performance management is still evolving, and many companies lack a culture or mechanism for managing cross-enterprise issue." This common mistake is where the Balanced Scorecard Concept (BSC) plays a pivotal role in successful SRM.
Frigo stresses the link between Strategic Risk Management and the BSC by concluding "[s]trategic frameworks like... the BSC provide a mechanism for managing strategic risk in an integrated and holistic way, across the enterprise." The Executive Strategy Manager(ESM) is a web-based software application that takes you step by step through both the construction of, and reporting on, Balanced Scorecards and strategy maps. The only application built and managed by the creators of the Balanced Scorecard, Drs. Kaplan and Norton, the ESM will help you create strategic alignment at the corporate, division, and individual level. The ESM provides the perfect resource for the company struggling to align it's Strategic Risk Management.
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Drs. Kaplan and Norton have focused their thoughts on strategy on the most pertinent topic in the American economy today, managing strategy in a downturn. In their most recent blog posting, Drs. Kaplan and Norton ask whether the Balanced Scorecard Concept could have helped some of today's failing industries, using the financial and auto sectors as examples. Can a Balanced Scorecard approach help industries be aware of and mitigate some of their risk?
Dr. Kaplan points out that companies generally lack adequate measures to quantify risk during unpredictable economic times. However, use of the BSC could help to broaden executives' views so they are not tied simply to short-term profits. Implementing the BSC with applications such as the Executive Strategy Manager helps companies maintain a larger strategic awareness of potential risks. The BSC also stimulates discussion in strategy meetings, allowing companies to aggregate the risk exposure onto their scorecard.
The BSC leads companies away from a short-term financial focus and towards a more encompassing strategic view. Use of applications such as the ESM facilitate a focus on strategy, an especially relevant concern during a downturn.
You can access the article and learn more by clicking here!
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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."
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Palladium's Managing Director and CMO sent out a note this morning exploring Cari Tuna's article in today's Wall Street Journal.
An article in today's Wall Street Journal, "Executives Shift to Survival Mode," reports that The Conference Board has reconfirmed that executing strategy remains the number one issue facing executives worldwide. Palladium's value proposition addresses this issue directly, now prominently featured in the banner at the top of our home page:
Palladium Group is the global leader in helping organizations execute their strategies by making better decisions. Our expertise in strategy, risk, corporate performance management, and business intelligence helps clients achieve an execution premium.
The Conference Board, based in New York, conducted surveys in August and October; 190 executives responded to both surveys. The top two challenges of "greatest concern" cited were: (1)"Excellence in execution" and (2) "Consistent execution of strategy by top management." "Excellence in execution" (actually executing) moved up in importance by 9 percentage points in two months; "Consistent execution of strategy by top management" (consistently executing) increased by more than 5 percentage points.
That's what Palladium BSC Hall of Fame organizations do to achieve their execution premiums: achieve results, and consistently continue to achieve them. The concerns of executives around the world and Palladium's value proposition have never been better aligned.
The ESM supports Kaplan and Norton's best practice methodology to drive "excellence in execution."
To access the article, click on: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122714668753343401.html
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In a recent article in McKinsey Quarterly (Sept 2008) they wrote about managing IT during a downturn. They stressed the importance of not making across the board cuts, but that it was now more important than ever to look at IT's role in the business and be more strategic (read selective) in what investments and reductions are made. Our strategy maps, scorecards, and initiative management processes and practices can help companies navigate these treacherous waters in a resource constrained world. We should listen for these cues during our client and prospect conversations and think about how we can help them make better decisions that will address short term issues, yet still position our clients for longer term success when things turn positive. Remember those who make the better decisions now will do better (survive longer) and be positioned for the next upturn in the economny.
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.
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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!"
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