The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment Kindle Edition

The Strategy-Focused OrganizationBuilding on their Balanced Scorecard approach, Kaplan and Norton have developed an impressive framework in The Strategy-Focused Organization for the implementation of strategy. They have found that 90% of strategic initiatives fail due not to formulation but to implementation difficulties. Successful implementation of strategy requires all parts of an organizations to be aligned and linked to the strategy, while strategy itself must become a continual process in which everyone is involved. The Balanced Scorecard, originally seen by the authors as a measurement tool, is now presented as a means for implementing strategy by creating alignment and focus. Financial measures report on lagging financial indicators. The Balanced Scorecard aims to report on the drivers of future value creation. The book shows in detail how this is done from four perspectives: Financial, customer, internal business perspective, and learning and growth (these are outlined on p.77). These four perspectives produce a highly detailed framework when combined with the five principles of a strategy-focused organization: 1: Translate the strategy to operational terms. 2: Align the organization to the strategy. 3: Make strategy everyone's everyday job. 4: Make strategy a continual process. 5: Mobilize change through executive leadership. Absorbing every detail of this book will require many hours. The sheer detail of this complex system requires considerable attention, perhaps more than some readers can muster, but clearly distinguishes this work from many books full of business fluff. The style tends to be turgid and pedantic while being admirably complete. Readers can grasp the essence of the book's central points by reading only Chapter 1 (Creating the Strategy-Focused Organization), Chapter 3 (Building Strategy Maps), and Chapter 8 (Creating Strategic Awareness). Skip quickly through the chapters in Part Two: Aligning the Organization to Create Synergies. This section is the least engaging of the five. The balanced scorecard approach to strategy will appeal to those with a systematizing frame of mind. The book is filled with complex diagrams of corporate processes consisting of interrelated boxes and forces. This approach is extremely detailed and complex. It requires a major commitment and effort. Though the authors claim it can be implemented by smaller organizations, this will be more challenging than for large companies who can commit a team full time to working out the details. Much of the value of the approach may lie not so much in following through on completely working out the balanced scorecard but on absorbing the lessons regarding organizational integration across silos and the importance of clarity about mission, strategy, and goals. The balanced scorecard is one way to achieve and implement this clarity but not the only way. Another would be continual reiteration of these (as in Confessions of An Extraordinary Executive). Some companies may benefit from strict use of this system, including finding units of measurement for its implementation. Others will gain much from applying the insights without such a formal and complete implementation.

This book has been on my shelves for 2 months before i read it. I know this is an important work, but I initially think it will only be suitable to large corporations.After reading it i realize that this can ultimately be apiled to small/med size companies. Companies with revenue of less than 500K USD/year revenue can reap similar benefit compare to the fortune 500 companies by implementing it.The samples shown in the book make it easier for the reader to copy and adapt for their own organisation. Most samples are derived from the big-companies (typical harvar business book ;-))), but we can adapt it to our (small company) needs.Focus on chapter 3, about STRATEGY MAP. this is most important. And the GENERIC STRATEGY MAP can be appleid to most organisation with minimum of ajustments. COPY and ADAPT. we can not afford to hire the expensive consultants, so we have to be our own consultant. And this book is a good guide.Most small companies do not even have VISION, MISSION etc statements. But the balance scorecard helps us focus on strategy, objectives, measures, target and INITIATIVES that are measurable, in a more descreptive ways. This is in a sense a HOW-TO book about strategy, and about measurements.I've decided to use the sytem for our company sam-design.com which now has 58 people, and sell the intangibles (designs). We won Andersen Consulting (Accenture now) award of ENTERPRISE-50 (awards for most promising small and medium size companies in Indonesia) last November. We think that the strategy describe in the book will boost our company's growth despite the slowdown of the internet.I started to read the book with much skeptism but ended up recommending it to many friends, write a review about it for local magazine and promoting the idea of strategy based on balance scorecard. ( I did read the original balance scorecard book which was published in 96, interested in the idea for a while but did not implement any of it).So for the small companies out there, go and get the book, this is not only for the big-boys....

The book gives you a good review of the main BSC concepts and good ideas to implement this way of thinking in your company. I want to learn more about this topic!

I bought a hardcopy version of this book many years ago. It revolutionized my thinking on performance management. I bought the Kindle edition to brush up.... well worth the read again. The case studies are very helpful in illustrating concepts. My only complaint is that the case studies became a little tedious. The number and content of the case studies could have been tightened.A few comments about the Balanced Scorecard methodology. I find that Balanced Scorecarding offers a very coherent and complete approach to performance management. Other contemporary methods such as Objectives and Key Results offer very similar approaches from an execution perspective. Where Balanced Scorecarding has a leg up it seems to me, is in its structure from the big picture to action. Particularly for organizations who want to get started with performance management, the structure forces critical thinking about the context and nature of the organization and how strategy can be adapted to those circumstances. OKR is more flexible and seemingly more dynamic in terms of execution. Both are solid approaches to performance management.

Excellent! An indepth study in organisational design and alignment, it speaks of the authors' excellence in bringing to the lay person the toolkit for actionising and deploying the concept of a scorecard to reap the benefits of mapping effectively to the organisation's external and internal business scenario vis-a-vis the big picture of the greater business ecology.

This ebook is on my I-Pad and I cross reference the exaplanations and cases to some of my advisory work and research. Whilst it was written a while ago, it is based on sound fieldwork and cases. A great business reference book. Also read the latest book by Kaplan and Norton - The Execution Premium for an update on how strategy links to operation.

初版を買って勉強しました。原著も最近購入しましたが、訳本に反映されていないのが残念。

Excellent book

現在BSCは使っておりませんが、今後のために学習しています。