Rating: 
Summary: tools that support Balanced Scorecard conception?
Review: I'm running a small consulting company and my prior goal was to identify what Balanced Scorecard is and in what way can I suggest it to my existent clients.
I've started learning BSC from "Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System", a Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton.
The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action is a great book, but it's far away from scorecard success step-by-step.
I've searched with google for Balanced Scorecard and related topics, but there was just "Kaplan and Norton wrote..." or "Our consulting company..." articles. Also, I've found Strategy2Act software, that seems to be a good point to start developing BSc.
My opinion is that it's a great book for every independent consultant. But there are a lot of job to translate this conception into something useful for real company.
For my opinion the good idea to start with is "connect everyone with strategy". It sounds like easy to do, but effective way to start using BSc ideas in company strategy.
Rating: 
Summary: Badly written, top-down management drivel
Review: If I had a business student who wrote a paper as turgidly as this book is written, I'd flunk her. These folks come from Harvard? It reads like it was written in a business center in Burma, and then translated badly. I hope they talk better than they write!Not only is it horribly written, but the ideas are truly regressive. It's the old top-down, command-style management, ways to ensure that employees are doing what management is telling them they need to. I can imagine this book being useful in East Germany in the early 60s; I can't imagine a forward-thinking corporation (or governemnt) in the year 2000 using this, except out of ignorance or desperation. Go across the street to MIT's Peter Senge (or half a dozen basic business books for that matter) for much more useful approaches.
Rating: 
Summary: Be a Top Performer
Review: If you want to rise to the top in your business and career you need to have a great system for managing results. The management cycle involves defining objectives, assigning responsibilities, developing performance standards, evaluating results, and developing improvements where necessary. There may be many layers or hierarchies of organizational objectives, such as Corporate, Branch, Department, Team, and Individual. A good management system will capture all of the organizational objectives, and all will be linked to the overall business strategy. One helpful tool for capturing organizational objectives is the Balanced Scorecard. This system
uses measures in four major categories: 1. FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE 2. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION 3. INTERNAL BUSINESS PROCESSES 4. LEARNING AND GROWTH REQUIREMENTS The actual measures selected are highly dependent upon the type of business and should be carefully developed to ensure proper
results are obtained. The goal is to select measures that best relate to the overall company strategy. As such, each scorecard will be unique. I have used a Balanced Scorecard and highly recommend them to help organize the complex assemblage of organizational objectives into a unitary whole. This fantastic book tells you everything you need to know. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Once a 5 star essential, but now slightly outdated
Review: Kaplan and Norton are the visionaries behind the Balanced Scorecard (BSc), and this is their first book on the subject. BSc as Kaplan and Norton conceived of it was focused on measurement, specifically measuring variables that had some linkage to corporate financial results so that the direction of the organization could be determined prior to the occurrence of a bad quarter or two. THE MEASURES OF ANY MANAGEMENT CONCEPT ARE ITS ADOPTION AND ITS STAYING POWER, AND KAPLAN AND NORTON'S BSc IS AN OVERWHELMING SUCCESS. BUT companies that enacted BSc's started to tie them to corporate strategies, making them strategic management tools and not just measurement tools. One of the advancements was to tie define measures that measured the success of strategic intent as defined by specific objectives and goals. Another was to create cause and effect maps of the objectives, called "strategy maps." Measurement is, of course, still an important part of the BSc, but the process of determining what to measure begins higher up the strategic ladder. KAPLAN AND NORTON THEMSELVES CHRONICLE THE GROWTH OF BSc INTO A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT TOOL IN THEIR SUBSEQUENT WORK. So, this book is a bit outdated, though it is still a useful introduction. However, I recommend that you try:
* Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Kaplan and Norton * The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment, also by Kaplan and Norton * Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results by Paul R. Niven And a good introductory article to the idea of strategy mapping is "Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System", a Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton that is also available on Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: Once a 5 star essential, but now slightly outdated
Review: Kaplan and Norton are the visionaries behind the Balanced Scorecard (BSc), and this is their first book on the subject. BSc as Kaplan and Norton conceived of it was focused on measurement, specifically measuring variables that had some linkage to corporate financial results so that the direction of the organization could be determined prior to the occurrence of a bad quarter or two. THE MEASURES OF ANY MANAGEMENT CONCEPT ARE ITS ADOPTION AND ITS STAYING POWER, AND KAPLAN AND NORTON'S BSc IS AN OVERWHELMING SUCCESS. BUT companies that enacted BSc's started to tie them to corporate strategies, making them strategic management tools and not just measurement tools. One of the advancements was to tie define measures that measured the success of strategic intent as defined by specific objectives and goals. Another was to create cause and effect maps of the objectives, called "strategy maps." Measurement is, of course, still an important part of the BSc, but the process of determining what to measure begins higher up the strategic ladder. KAPLAN AND NORTON THEMSELVES CHRONICLE THE GROWTH OF BSc INTO A STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT TOOL IN THEIR SUBSEQUENT WORK. So, this book is a bit outdated, though it is still a useful introduction. However, I recommend that you try:
* Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Kaplan and Norton * The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment, also by Kaplan and Norton * Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results by Paul R. Niven And a good introductory article to the idea of strategy mapping is "Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System", a Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton that is also available on Amazon.
Rating:
Summary: Finding the Leverage Points
Review: Kaplan and Norton's book establishes the pathways to develop not only a superb strategic management system but an effective strategic communication system as well. In every business those two enterprises are co-dependant and are key to effective strategies being effectively realized. Those looking for the trendy business "idea d'jour" should look elsewhere; the BSC focuses on practical methods and measures to move strategy into sustainable operational actions. While the Balanced Scorecard may not transform your organization, it can give you the competitive advantage needed to prevail in your market. The book is very readable and gives a comprehensive overview of the processes involved.
Rating:
Summary: Overall an insightful book, but weak on technical issues
Review: Kaplan and Norton's book has become an industry standard, and deservedly so - effective implementation of a BSC is highly effective for an organisation. The much-touted Six-Sigma program borrows VERY heavily from the ideas of Kaplan and Norton. All of the other positive comments made by reviewers are valid, but my single criticism of this book is that it fails to adequately warn the reader of the tremendous technical issues that will arise when trying to actually source the data required. It's easy to put space for a statistic such as "customer satisfaction" into a scorecard, but actually determining that particular value implies an enormous amount of summarisation of data from sales, complaints, returns, CRM and so on. Doing all of this requires many things to be accomplished beforehand, such as the standardisation of business definitions (eg. does each department use the same definition of "customer"? Without this consistency the statistic becomes meaningless). If you are seriously investigating BSC as a management tool, you will need to get informed about Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence first. Without a firm foundation of low-level information integration and management, BSC just becomes another fluffy management gimmick. This is a shame, because it doesn't have to be that way - BSC can be incredibly valuable and efficient if implemented effectively.
Rating:
Summary: Highly effective approach to managing.
Review: Kaplan has produced a classic work here, with a solid approach to using metrics in the long and short term management of an organization. This really is a must for corporate leaders. Complementing The Balanced Scorecard, I would also recommend The 2000 Percent Solution, a breakout strategy for really getting your company moving forward again.
Rating:
Summary: Not quite as easy as it looks
Review: Many organizations are in the process of implementing the 'Balanced Scorecard', yet some are struggling. Either they fail to implement the measures, or the measures fail to have the expected impact. Organizations execute four 'mission critical' activities, for a scorecard to succeed. Each is more difficult than might appear and must be performed by a different part of the organization. 1. Articulating the strategy: Top management must articulate and disseminate the strategy. More than measuring success, a performance system communicates a strategy. Without a strategy, the performance measures become an 'anything goes' exercise. 'Anything goes in theory' means that 'everything stays in practice'. 2. Designing the measures: A core task team must design the measures to avoid uneconomic behavior. Poorly thought out measures create counter productive activity. 3. Operationalizing the measures: Once measures are defined, programmers operationalize and automate them. Even revenue can be complicated in practice: When is it recorded, and what does it include. The task team may well find themselves getting what they asked for, and not what they wanted. 4. Getting the buy-in: Change management skills are needed to align the changes and create buy in. Dilbert cynically states that there are two steps to a great performance measurement system. 1) Gather information and 2) ignore it. For performance measurement to work, the system must be accepted, understood, and aligned to the reward. The book, 'The Balanced Scorecard' by Kaplan and Norton has become compulsory reading for middle management. It is very good, with the one weakness that it makes performance measurement look deceptively simple.
Rating:
Summary: Buena en forma y en fondo
Review: Me parecio sinceramente competitiva, pues muestra de manera tangible los beneficios y condiciones de gestión automatizada y controlada, del Balanced Scorecard. Gracias a Kaplan por ser tan explícito.
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