Product Description

This is an enhanced edition of HBR article R00509, originally published in September/October 2000. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. If you were a military general on the march, you'd want your troops to have plenty of maps--detailed information about the mission they were on, the roads they would travel, the campaigns they would undertake, and the weapons at their disposal. The same holds true in business: a workforce needs clear and detailed information to execute a business strategy successfully. Authors Robert Kaplan and David Norton, cocreators of the balanced scorecard, have adapted that seminal tool to create strategy maps. Strategy maps let an organization describe and illustrate--in clear and general language--its objectives, initiatives, targets markets, performance measures, and the links between all the pieces of its strategy. Using Mobil North American Marketing and Refining Company as an example, Kaplan and Norton walk through the creation of a strategy map and its four distinct regions--financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth--which correspond to the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard. The authors show how the Mobil division used the map to transform itself from a centrally controlled manufacturer of commodity products to a decentralized, customer-driven organization.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #111857 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Released on: 2009-03-03
• Format: Download: PDF
• Binding: Digital
• 13 pages

Customer Reviews

Great for a Quick Study of Mapping
No, this is not an intense study of mapping, but if you're interested in gaining a quick overview of the concept so you can participate in a strategic mapping initiative, this article will help prepare you for the process. Also very useful as a visual reference aid while working through a more thorough publication such as "Strategy Maps" by Kaplan and Norton. For $7, I felt it a worthwhile purchase.

However, there was a technical glitch. When I downloaded it, the article came up within IE6 and Adobe Acrobat. My printer was at the office and the File, Save menu options were greyed out. I didn't want to lose the article, so I clicked to Explorer in WinXP, located the LocalSettings folder and from there the TemporaryInternetFiles folder, sorted by size, and there it was - approx 3,500K. I copied and pasted into MyDocuments folder and it appeared with the proper name. I included this in my review in case you experience a similar problem.

This does not print - you can read it though
The paper is as advertised, but you will probably only be able to read it. There is an error in the reader software that will not allow it to print properly (I only got a couple of pages to print). When I finally took, or rather wasted, the time to investigate further on the Adobe site there is a long section on this problem in the "User to User" forums.

First I complained to HBR who said it is not their problem! For someone who sells articles and books on Marketing that is a very strange reply. They said ask Adobe. I tried. The support person was polite and helpful, perhaps just to get me off the phone as nothing else happened.

As there are intricate diagrams you will be a masochist with time on your hands if you want to copy that by hand.

Strategy map/template to translate strategy into actions
This 2000 Harvard Business Review article, by Harvard Business School professor Robert Kaplan and David Norton, founder and president of the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative ... and ex-president of Nolan, Norton & Co., is an extension to their 1996-book 'The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action' and their 1992-, 1993-, and 1996-articles. The balanced scorecard made it possible for managers to express and measure operational performance.

In this article, the authors discuss the use of strategy maps to explain your strategy to all people in your organization. The authors use balanced scorecard strategy maps to show how an organization can convert its assets into desired outcomes: "... the template shows how employees, need certain knowledge, skills, and systems (learning and growth perspective) to innovate and build the right strategic capabilities and efficiencies (internal process perspective) so that they can deliver specific value to the market (customer perspective), which will lead to higher shareholder value (financial perspective)." According to the authors it is best to build these strategy maps from the top down, and then charting the routes that will lead to the desired outcomes. This should make the likelihood of a successful implementation of strategy possible. The authors use Mobil's (integrated U.S. refiner-marketer) strategy map as an example.

I was pleasantly surprised by this fourth article, since I did not enjoy their second and third articles. The difference between this article and the previous two is the introduction of the balanced scorecard strategy map. This map is a great visual template which is useful to all companies and explains the cause-and-effect relationships between the various perspectives. The advantage of this map is that it is understandable to people who were not involved in the strategic planning process - normally, the employees in the firing line. The article is written in simple English. Please note that this article runs on Acrobat eBook Reader software and is not a .pdf-file.