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Summary: Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants
Review: A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.
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Summary: Common sense thoughtfully organized
Review: Any business could benefit from the thoughtful approach to strategic planning outlined in this book.
Define success - identify the customers and their needs require to achieve that success - build the internal process to satisfy those customers - and provide the learning and growth necessary for people to make a quantum leap in performance.
This process is good common sense, well organized. I have given several copies away to associates
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Summary: The Balanced Scorecard : Translating Strategy into Action
Review: Anyone with an ounce of real practical business experience knows that all businesses have evaluation systems to measure the performance of business units. However, the classical BSC methodology of Kaplan and Norton is cumbersome and too much effort to implement and it has never (nor will it be) widely adopted.In the financial services segment, practically no financial insitution uses the classical BSC methodology. Do they evaluate the performance of their business units? Absolutely. But the evaluation methodology reflects the practical realities of the business, not on the academecians' view of the world.
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Summary: THIS IS A GOOD BOOK
Review: AS THE VICE PRESIDENT OF A SMALL/MIDDLE SIZE DISTRIBUTOR, WE FOUND THIS BOOK GAVE US SOME GOOD IDEAS ON MEASUREMENT. OUR MANAGERS WERE ASKED TO READ IT ALSO. IF THIS IS THE LINE OF INFO THAT YOUR LOOKING AT, YOU SHOULD READ THE 2000 PERCENT SOLUTION WHICH HAS MANY NEW AND EFFECTIVE IDEAS
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Summary: Necessary reading, and imperative implementation
Review: Balanced Scorecard delivers what it promises: a bridge between strategic goals and performance monitoring. As a strategy consultant I highly recommend it -- not because it offers a canned strategic solution (it doesn't), but because when executives think deeply enough about strategy to examine implementation and organizational alignment, strategies get much better, productive and successful. And they even get communicated outside of the executive office! I consider this book necessary (though not sufficient) for any company who wants their strategic planning to pay off.
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Summary: You Must Read !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Balanced Scorecard is an excellent book for prospective business managers because of some reasons. One of them is that the book clearly indicates the logical relationship between financial objectives and other non-financial objectives for the firms. Secondly, the book presents some very usable tools for translating strategy into action. For this aim, measurement tools for strategy are developed. These two priorities makes the book an important source in the field of strategic planning. In this book, four dimensions of strategy thought are "Financial, Customer, Operations, and Learning and Development". Authors strongly believe that there should be a powerful connection among these four dimensions if organizations are to be successful in an environment in which stiff competition dominates. According to the authors, one of the most important cause of business failures is that some companies make an excess emphasis on financial objectives and so ignore the ways to realize these objectives. How to develop a system which makes an equal emphasis on four dimensions of strategy mentioned above is explained in the book. For managers who do not know but want to learn how to make a plan that will be functional and measurable, this book is a must. The one of the most important contributions of this book is its approach to the Learning Process in strategic planning. According to the authors, strategy creating process is also a learning process and therefore should be exploited. I strongly recommend.
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Summary: Clean Up Your Implementation of New Directions
Review: Having an idea is one thing. Getting that idea accomplished is another. THE BALANCED SCORECARD is wonderful for helping with the latter. It is the best explanation of how to communicate and implement a new direction that I have ever seen. But you need a great new idea to start with, and I strongly suggest you read THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION for that purpose, since it is just as powerful on purposeful innovation as THE BALANCED SCORECARD is on implementation of innovation. The two books make a perfect pair for you to create much more success!
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Summary: A common sense, super hard reading, marketing ploy?
Review: I have read tomes of quantum theory that were easier to read. I find myself going back over and over single sentences, which are half page long. The idea of putting actual strategy, steps & measurements behind a corporate vision is nothing new. I fear this book was more to guide executives toward consulting services, then to contribute to corporate welfare.
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Summary: These are simple business ideas dressed up
Review: I read the initial Harvard Business Review article years ago and was excited about the concepts. Rushed out to buy the book when it was first available. What a disappointment! This book is little more than business 101: aligning objectives, strategies, tactics with employee work. Important? Yes. Unique? No.
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Summary: How Do You know if Your Organization Is Winning or Losing?
Review: I read this book when it was first published (1996) and recently re-read it. As Kaplan and Norton explain in their Preface, "the Balanced Scorecard evolved from an improved measurement system to an improved management system." The distinction is critically important to understanding this book as well as The Strategy-Focused Organization which they later wrote. Senior executives in various companies have used the Balanced Scorecard as the central organizing framework for important managerial processes such as individual and team goal setting, compensation, resource allocation, budgeting and planning, and strategic feedback and learning. When writing this book, it was the authors' hope that the observations they share would help more executives to launch and implement Balanced Scorecard programs in their organizations. The material is organized within two Parts, preceded by the excellent Preface and then two introductory chapters: "Measurement and Management in the Information Age" and "Why Does Business Need a Balanced Scorecard?" Logically, Part One examines measurement of business strategy; Part Two examines management of business strategy. Having read all of the 12 chapters, each concluded with a Summary of key points, readers are then provided with an Appendix: "Building a Balanced Scorecard." That process consists of a series of specific "tasks": (1) selection of the appropriate organizational unit, (2) identification of the SBU/corporate linkages, (3) completion of the first round of interviews during which key executives are briefed on the Balanced Scorecard program, (4) evaluation by the program's "architect" and other members of design team of feedback from various interviews, (5) conducting a "first round" workshop for the top management team, (6) conducting meetings during which the "architect" works with several subgroups, (7) conducting a "second round" workshop for members of the top management team, their direct subordinates, and an appropriate number of middle managers, (8) formulating the implementation plan, (9) conducting the "third round" workshop, and finally (10) Finalizing the implementation plan. Kaplan and Norton guide their reader through each stage of the process, suggesting all manner of strategies and tactics for consideration without inhibiting their reader from determining what is most appropriate for her or his own organization. Although decision-makers in larger organizations will derive substantial benefit from this book, it would be a mistake to assume that the Balanced Scorecard would not be appropriate to small-to-midsize organizations. On the contrary, it may be even more valuable to them because they have relatively fewer resources available; therefore, the consequences of a failed strategy have greater (in some instances fatal) impact. The two concepts of "balance" and "scorecard" are critically important. All organizations must formulate and then effectively manage those strategies which enable them to achieve an appropriate balance of various resources while taking full advantage of measurement devices by which to obtain relevant as well as accurate and timely data for their strategies' scoreboard. Kaplan and Norton obviously have all this in mind when suggesting, in the Appendix, "core" measures for finance (e.g. ROI/EVA), customer relationships (e.g. customer retention), and learning and growth (e.g. employee satisfaction). Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Kaplan and Norton's sequel to it, The Strategy-Focused Organization. It continues their rigorous excamination of what a Balanced Scoreboard can help all organizations to accomplish with effective management of a correct strategy.
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