Product Description

In today's business environment, strategy has never been more important. Yet research shows that most companies fail to execute strategy successfully. Behind this abysmal track record lies an undeniable fact: many companies continue to use management processes-top-down, financially driven, and tactical-that were designed to run yesterday's organizations.

Now, the creators of the revolutionary performance management tool called the Balanced Scorecard introduce a new approach that makes strategy a continuous process owned not just by top management, but by everyone. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Robert Kaplan and David Norton share the results of ten years of learning and research into more than 200 companies that have implemented the Balanced Scorecard. Drawing from more than twenty in-depth case studies-including Mobil, CIGNA, Nova Scotia Power, and AT&T Canada-Kaplan and Norton illustrate how Balanced Scorecard adopters have taken their groundbreaking tool to the next level. These organizations have used the scorecard to create an entirely new performance management framework that puts strategy at the center of key management processes and systems.

Kaplan and Norton articulate the five key principles required for building Strategy-Focused Organizations: (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, and (5) mobilize change through strong, effective leadership. The authors provide a detailed account of how a range of organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors have deployed these principles to achieve breakthrough, sustainable performance improvements.

Presenting a practical, proven framework steeped in rich case study experience, The Strategy-Focused Organization helps solve a universal management problem-not just how to formulate strategy, but how to make it work. Building on one of the most revolutionary business ideas of our time, this important book shows how today's leaders can shape their own companies to meet the challenges and reap the rewards of a new competitive era.

Robert S. Kaplan is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School. David P. Norton is President of Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Inc.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7209 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 416 pages

Amazon.com Review
In their previous book, The Balanced Scorecard, Robert Kaplan and David Norton unveiled an innovative "performance management system" that any company could use to focus and align their executive teams, business units, human resources, information technology, and financial resources on a unified overall strategy--much as businesses have traditionally employed financial management systems to track and guide their general fiscal direction. In The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton explain how companies like Mobil, CIGNA, and Chemical Retail Bank have effectively used this approach for nearly a decade, and in the process present a step-by-step implementation outline that other organizations could use to attain similar results. Their book is divided into five sections that guide readers through development of a completely individualized plan that is created with "strategy maps" (graphical representations designed to clearly communicate desired outcomes and how they are to be achieved), then infused throughout the enterprise and made an integral part of its future. In several chapters devoted to the latter, for example, the authors show how their models have linked long-term strategy with day-to-day operational and budgetary management, and detail the "double loop" process for doing so, monitoring progress, and initiating corrective actions if necessary. --Howard Rothman

Review
" . . . Kaplan and Norton show they know how to follow a good opening act [The Balanced Scorecard] without losing their own balance." -- American Way, December 2000

In this fast-moving economy of big ideas and trendy business strategies, one can sometimes lose track of what's in and what's out. If the last round of big ideas (disruptive technologies and chasm-crossings) was about finding the right product and market, this year's model is about getting it done. As companies turn again to profitability and leveraging existing resources and assets, managers are gravitating toward ideas that help them execute their strategies.

The Strategy-Focused Organization, then, comes at an auspicious moment. In a follow-up to their influential and popular 1996 book The Balanced Scorecard, Harvard Business School professor Robert Kaplan and consultant David Norton take their popular ideas about measuring success and show how to build an organization that puts those ideas to use.

Kaplan and Norton have rolled out their balanced scorecard model in hundreds of companies, including such marquee clients as Cigna, Mobil and UPS. They have built a successful consulting practice based on it and are now seeing other books crop up about using their tool.

Like many consequential management devices, the balanced scorecard is fairly straightforward. The authors argue that companies all too often focus on the wrong numbers. Managers obsess over outcomes or lagging indicators instead of harder-to-measure factors such as cycle time, customer satisfaction and levels of innovation. The solution is a more balanced scorecard, and in the first book Kaplan and Norton go into great detail on how to build one.

The underlying principles here are not new. The authors build on a tradition of process-focused quality initiatives stretching from Six Sigma and Total Quality Management all the way back to Frederick Taylor's scientific management. Kaplan and Norton, however, move the notion forward somewhat by more explicitly linking their measures to successful outcomes. Employees more easily see how increasing cycle time or reducing defects, for example, can affect financial performance and customer satisfaction.

The scorecard describes and tracks a company's given goals. Kaplan and Norton argue in their new book, though, that their approach can also help managers execute those goals by acting as a sort of corporate superego. "Measurement creates focus for the future because the measures chosen by managers communicate to the organization what is important," they write, somewhat grandly claiming that at many companies their scorecard system "replaced the budget as the center for management processes. In effect, the balanced scorecard became the operating system for a new management process."

Kaplan and Norton deliver on the subtitle's promise of showing how companies use the balanced scorecard. While at times the book reads a bit like a Harvard Business School case writ large – no surprise, given that many of the examples cited were subjects of HBS case studies by the authors – the book presents a wealth of finer points and stories about the tool in practice.

While the balanced scorecard promises great reward, it also calls for a large commitment. The authors suggest, for example, that every employee construct personalized balanced scorecards. They advocate regular, detailed communication of the numbers. Such practices can, if pursued too vigorously, channel an inordinate amount of time and energy to the process of "excellence" rather than the business of getting things done. Several quality-obsessed companies of the '90s fell prey to such habits.

Still, most companies could do far worse than overemphasize doing the right things. At a time when companies increasingly need to deliver on strategy rather than come up with the next big idea, Kaplan and Norton help pull together meaningful measures for a knowledge-based economy. A fairly simple idea, but as the authors argue, execution is everything.

From the Back Cover
"The Strategy-Focused Organization is a great example of how practical management concepts grounded in solid research grow in usefulness. History will judge this to be one of the most important books on strategy ever written because it bridges the chasm between concept and implementation. Every manager should read it."

-Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School, and Author, The Innovator's Dilemma

"Kaplan and Norton chronicle the long-overdue shift from management 'by the numbers' to a performance management process that places well-articulated, knowledge-based strategies at the center of every employee's activities. Given the pace of change in the new economy, strategy-focused processes that are measurable, repeatable, and supported by superior information are the only true sources of sustainable competitive advantage. Organizations that ignore this reality do so at their own risk."

-James H. Goodnight, President & CEO, SAS

"The Balanced Scorecard is an innovative performance management tool that provides enormous help in tackling the tough job of managing state government for results."

-Gary Locke, Governor, State of Washington

"Kaplan and Norton's framework is clearly taking hold as a business model for today and tomorrow. Our own Balanced Scorecard journey has allowed us not only to 'tell the story of our strategy' and deliver positive results for our stakeholders, but to unite our team members around a system that measures, rewards, and motivates performance based on achieving goals that move our company forward." -Dieter Huckestein, Hotel Division President, Hilton Hotels Corporation

"The Strategy-Focused Organization recognizes and reinforces organization issues and moves the Balanced Scorecard from a strategic imperative to a business result. Leaders in all functions-and at all levels-will find it a useful blueprint for turning strategy into action."

-Dave Ulrich, Professor of Business Administration, University of Michigan

Customer Reviews

The Changing Strategy Landscape
In today's business landscape, it has never been more
important to implement solid strategies -- the unique
and sustainable ways by which organizations create
value. Yet, research reveals that companies have an
increasingly difficult time executing the strategies they
need to remain competitive. One reason for this is clearly
that while these strategies, and the business issues behind
them, are changing constantly, the tools for measuring
the effectiveness of these strategies have not kept pace.

The Most Important Work on Strategy
Strategy is a largely misunderstood, mis-directed and inscrutable part of business. Its failings in general come from a few basic misunderstandings about what strategy is as contrasted with tactics, and from the dearth of a way to articulate what may be intuitive for a visionary leader. Norton and Kaplan put forth a method for conceiving, articulating, sharing and measuring strategy that is elegant, simple, translatable and executable. Its basic foundation, a visual representation of the cause and effect relationships necessary to generate strategic goals is breathtaking in its simplicity and brilliance. I have yet to find a more important or transparent approach to the creation of long-term strategy for organizations. This is not a "page-turner", it is a text book. As such, don't expect scintillation--expect to learn the tools that are indispensable to creating real, manageable and measurable results. This is an essential part of every business-person's library.

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

Overview, technique and implementation
An outstandingly well written book that decribes the balanced scorecard and provides excellent examples. An effective, practical guide for C-level executives and mid-level managers for implementing strategic scorcarding. I recommned this book for the breadth and depth of the explanation of the subject matter and concise implmentation examples.