Scorecarding – Getting Started

18 05 2009

Scorecarding, or Strategy Management, is a journey.  It is more important we get started and learn and adapt as we go.  One reason why scorecard projects stall is that organizations expect immediate maturity.  It takes time to understand the different stages, and the different stages are important and valuable points of learning.  

  • Start small and focused with a team that has a well defined management process.
  • Don’t make changes every month, give the concept a quarter to learn.  Then meet to make the changes.
  • Use the concept to facilitate conversations about what creates value.
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Clarity – Pick One Voice

17 05 2009

A few months ago during the Presidential inauguration, a concept I have kicked around a bit presented itself in a vivid example.  What stuck me was all the pomp and circumstance, all the background noise.  Did I really want to hear the opening prayer, the closing prayer, all the singing, and the poetry?  No, I wanted one thing – to hear the message this President was going to deliver on how he was going to set up his presidency.  Everything else was in a way, distraction.

As organizations, how often do we set a clear and concise goals for the organization and the individuals?  How many times do we repeat what someone else just said?

When we design KPIs for the organization, do we create a single measure for a goal and use other analytics for support?  Or do we create a number of ways to view the goal?  If we create many definitions, we allow for people to pick the one they want.  Use KPI design as a way to gain clarity of a goal.  Use Scorecard design to gain clarity of purpose.


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The Value of Scorecarding

21 04 2009

One of my first Scorecard exercises is one of my favorites.  It taught me a great deal about the power of scorecarding.  I did what I suspect most people do.  I interviewed all the VPs and developed a long list of KPIs.  I then used an excel spreadsheet to organize the KPIs.  I put the KPIs down the rows, and theVPs across the columns.  Then to help visualize the data, I placed “red” cells where VPs were directly impacted by the KPIs and “yellow” cells where the VPs were indirectly related.  I did not intend the colors for anything other to call out attention for each of the VPs.

By choosing the “red” and “yellow” I had each of the VPs concerned that they were under performing in each of those areas.  I had to explain a number of times, the reason for the colors.  
  • The first lesson was that by associating colors with performance, I clearly had the attention and focus of the executives of this team.  It sparked a number of very strong conversations about performance.
  • The second lesson is that communication is just as important.  By doing a less than stellar job of communicating (at least from a visual sense) the information, I wasted a tremendous amount of time that should have been used for more strategic discussion.  

Scorecarding can be a very powerful tool, but it needs to be used appropriately.


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Scorecard Layout

26 03 2009

As you design your scorecard, you should consider the story it tells and the goal of the process. One of my favorite starts to a project began with this opening line from the client…

“I know we are doing it wrong, just be gentle when you tell us how bad…”

In this specific case, they were trying to build a cube for slicing and dicing within the Scorecard environment.  (And in all fairness to my client he had inherited this design and was trying to figure out how to use it).  They ended up with multiple depths of scorecards along a number of different dimensions.  Analysis was very difficult as that was not the purpose of the tool.  In the end we built a cube for this and found a management report that was perfectly designed for a scorecard.  This report walked through KPIs for new customers, existing customer purchases, average deal sizes, average debt.

Often a great place to start with Scorecarding is to find an existing management report.  Now the tool can easily be integrated into the management process.


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Categories : KPI, Scorecard & Dashboard, Strategy Management