The Ultimate Text on Strategic Execution | The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action |...

A Good Read but One Size does Not Fit All | The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action | Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton

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	• The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton Harvard Business Press, 1996 - 322 pages average customer review:based on 56 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Although Great, it is Better in Hindsight

Balanced scorecards have become ubiquitous in modern business parlance. But to really understand their power and elegance requires an understanding of strategy mapping as depicted in Norton and Kaplan's other books. Because those other books were written later than this one, the deeper power of the scorecards really emerges in the follow-up to strategy mapping. Nonetheless, this is a cornerstone of any strategist's library, depicting the methodology that has become rightfully synonymous with measuring strategy. The real beauty of this approach does not lie only in its extraordinary identification of the key perspectives that must be measured to accomplish (or determine a need to revisit) strategy. Instead, the malleability of the scorecard as a means to measure all of the aspects of stakeholder delivery is really indispensable when approaching the complexity of modern organizations. With the advent of triple bottom lines and the demand to measure not just the results but their alleged leading indicators, balanced scorecards have become the standard for how to do so. No strategist or business leader's library should be without this book. It is as vital as is "The Wealth of Nations" to an economist.

Amie Devero, Author of Powered by Principle: Using Core Values to Build World-Class Organizations

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The Ultimate Text on Strategic Execution

As an author, speaker and consultant on strategy, I consider this book to be my bible. While dry and academic, the underlying principles are the most important and disruptive in the strategy area in the last 25 years. Kaplan and Norton are amongst the most disruptive thought leaders of our generation.

While hard to read cover to cover, every strategist practitioner should have The Balanced Scorecard on their bookshelf and become familiar with the concepts contained within it. In the hypercompetitive global marketplace, customers are demanding performance from their vendors and employees. The Balanced Scorecard provides a framework to execute strategy at the operational level, driving customer satisfaction, operational excellence and shareholder value. It is estimated that as many as half of the Fortune 500 companies have utilized some form of The Balanced Scorecard methodology.

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A Good Read but One Size does Not Fit All

The world doesn't need another long review of this book or the Balanced Scorecard concept but a little added perspective might be of value. BSC is most useful to organizations that need to jump start (or begin) their strategic planning efforts. The book lays out a practical and useful guide to do just that but many companies end up allowing BSC to become all consuming and not a means to an end. For this and other reasons, the majority of organizations don't follow through. The process described in this book is easy to read and absorb and consequently has a loyal following of adherents -- some of whom claim substantive results in their companies as a result. With the caveat that one size does not fit all, I would recommend this book as a component of your readings on business strategy and execution.

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Balanced Scorecard awesome book

This book is the bread and butter if you are into executing strategy.There is lots of good tips and detailed understanding.

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Essential Recommendations for Modern Business

The Balanced Scorecard is the first, most important, and most influential of Kaplan and Norton's books on the implementation of strategic planning. It marks a significant step forward from Hammer and Champy's business process engineering, and it provides a much needed alternative to management's obsession with quarterly reports and short-term profit and loss.

Of course, profit is essential. But what is innovative (and solidly based in practical research) is BSC's focus on three determiners of long-term business success: customer satisfaction, staffing and employee development, and the effectiveness of internal processes and systems. Kaplan and Norton promote BSC as a management method that addresses the special problems of modern business--complexity and high rate of change--and leverages the power of Information Technology in its current state.

The Balanced Scorecard provided me--experienced in business but lacking the MBA--an integrative overview of business knowledge and skills: it told me where my experience fit in the scheme of things, and what I need still to learn. It fits nicely with my studies of enterprise architecture and SOA, and I am pleased to find how thoroughly it accords with Herbert Simon's essential study of organizations, Administrative Behavior.

Kaplan and Norton give us many and extended examples of the application of BSC in different kinds of organizations. What they don't tell us is what kinds (and sizes) of organizations BSC isn't appropriate for. This weakness may be remedied in later books.

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Here is the book--by the recognized architects of the Balanced Scorecard--that shows how managers can use this revolutionary tool to mobilize their people to fulfill the company's mission. More than just a measurement system, the Balanced Scorecard is a management system that can channel the energies, abilities, and specific knowledge held by people throughout the organization toward achieving long-term strategic goals.

Kaplan and Norton demonstrate how senior executives in industries such as banking, oil, insurance, and retailing are using the Balanced Scorecard both to guide current performance and to target future performance. They show how to use measures in four categories-financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth-to align individual, organizational, and cross-departmental initiatives and to identify entirely new processes for meeting customer and shareholder objectives.

The authors also reveal how to use the Balanced Scorecard as a robust learning system for testing, gaining feedback on, and updating the organization's strategy. Finally, they walk through the steps that managers in any company can use to build their own Balanced Scorecard.

The Balanced Scorecard provides the management system for companies to invest in the long term-in customers, in employees, in new product development, and in systems-rather than managing the bottom line to pump up short-term earnings. It will change the way you measure and manage your business.

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