And finally, here's our top reason the 2013 Summit is worth it!

1. Our theme this year, MISSION: POSSIBLE, centers around developing real-world skills to help make your organization's mission possible in the biggest, most impactful way: RESULTS!

Learn more at www.missiondrivensummit.com and register today. 

This week, we've been counting down our Top Ten reasons to attend our professional development training and sessions at the Mission-Driven Management Summit on March 5th and 6th in Washington, DC. Early Bird rates end on Friday, so make sure you register now and mark your calendars!

5. Meet us or pick our brains during a round of Speed Consulting! (We think that deserves at least a top 5 spot!)

4. Understand how to maintain alignment even during leadership change, as presented by the Department of Commerce.

3. Keynote speaker Dave Norton, Balanced Scorecard creator, will inspire you to put your strategy to work and understand Best Practices. 

2. Interact with your peers in breakout sessions with leaders from the Los Angeles Unified School District, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, KIPP, and others. 

Let's do a double-header today! May the countdown of our top 10 reasons to attend our annual event to build your skills and increase your impact march on….

7. Earn bragging rights because you learned strategy tips from the FBI!

(Enough said. )

6. The Nation's Capital is your playground for two days - take a ten minute walk to the White House from the Press Club, view the monuments after dark (Lincoln is amazing!), or eat like a local at the end of the day.  

Ah, DC in March. *Typically* not a bad time of the year to visit our nation’s capital. The weather begins to perk up from its winter slumber, as the famous cherry blossoms slowly bud, preparing for a showy spring debut. Early March is the calm before the storm, before the tourists arrive in hordes, Metroing their way to the blooming waterfront. Take advantage!

*We regret our inability to predict sunny skies in advance!*

STAY TUNED FOR REASON #5  … and learn more at www.missiondrivensummit.com

Our Top 10 reasons to attend the 2013 Mission-Driven Management Summit continue! May I present reason number eight:

8. Participate in a clinic (offerings for beginners and advanced strategists) and take away tools that you can put to use immediately.

On Day 1 of the Summit (March 5^th), we’ll kick off with dueling clinics: A) a beginner’s guide to implementing a strategic performance system into your organization and B) an advanced clinic that delves into the details. Whether you’re in Clinic A or Clinic B, we promise you’ll wrap up the session with knowledge you can put to work immediately! (But we hope you’ll delay for 48 hours and stay for the Summit first!)

CLINIC A: From Vision to Strategy - Make the Balanced Scorecard Method Work for You

This introductory workshop for the Balanced Scorecard methodology will show you how to build and use the BSC in your organization to drive results.

CLINIC B: Countdown to Results - Manage Your Strategy 

This advanced clinic will help organizations instill alignment, reporting, and management processes to become a strategy focused organization.

STAY TUNED FOR REASON #7  … and learn more at www.missiondrivensummit.com

If you have met me or spoken to me about the Balanced Scorecard, I’m sure you have heard me say “the Balanced Scorecard is just a framework for managing your strategy.  It should make managing and achieving your strategy easier.  If you are spending more time on the framework than on your strategy, you are not doing something right.”  So, this week, I was finishing the book “American Icon” by Bryce Hoffman, and I came across a passage that reminded me of another book called “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande.  So, what do these books and the Balanced Scorecard have in common?  To me, they are both a reminder that you can’t just have a Balanced Scorecard or just have a strategy.  You actually must do something with it in order to achieve your strategic goals.

Let me clarify a little bit.  The Checklist Manifesto is a book about how creating a simple checklist can help you perform really well.  The two primary examples in the book are about flying a plane and performing surgery in a hospital.  If you have a simple checklist, then you will know the other people in the surgery room, be on the same page for the actual operation, and know many of the primary risks that can go wrong.  The American Icon is about how Alan Mulally came into Ford and saved it from the financial crisis when the other two major auto manufacturers in the US had to be bailed out by the government.  Mr. Mulally instituted weekly management reviews with data driven decision making.  So the paragraph from American Icon that brought it all together for me was one where Hoffman was quoting Mulally.

“You’ve got to trust the process.  You need to trust and nurture your emotional resilience,” he said. “Do you have a point of view about the future? Check. Is it still the right vision today? Check.  Do you have a comprehensive plan to deliver that? Check.  If you get skilled and motivated people working together through this process, you’re going to figure it out.  But you’ve got to trust it.”

So when I read that passage, I thought to myself, do you have a strategy map?  Does the map still reflect the strategy of the organization?  Are your measures and initiatives supporting this map?  Have you aligned divisions and departments around the strategy?  Are you having regular strategy review meetings?  Yes, then you have a much better than average chance of achieving your strategy.

It sounds easy, but this quote from Mulally is from when he is 4-5 years into this process.  It takes work to ingrain a process and get people to trust that it will work.  It took the <a href=http://www.ascendantsmg.com/blog/index.cfm/2012/9/24/What-do-Alabama-Football-and-the-Balanced-Scorecard-have-in-Common>Alabama Football</a> team 3 years and now it is executing like clockwork.

As for the checklist, imagine you went into every strategy review meeting with a checklist.  I’m sure you are doing strategy review meetings either monthly or quarterly.  Before the meeting, have you sent out information in advance? Check.  Have you identified the issue? Check. Do you have the right people in the room to make a decision about the issue?  Check. Do you have a process for following up from the decision with both actions and communications? Check.  OK, you are well on your way to executing your strategy.

In baseball’s first modern World Series in 1903, the Boston Americans rallied from a three game deficit to beat out the Pittsburgh Pirates. America was bustling: Henry Ford incorporated his automobile manufacturing company in a Detroit suburb, revolutionizing large-scale assembly, and the Wright brothers piloted their first flight.

Yet as immigrants continued to stream into the United States, the Catholic Archbishop of Boston, John J. Williams, was troubled. All around him he witnessed Boston’s immigrant population—which consisted of mostly Catholics—face horrific social and economic struggles. 

That same year, determined to affect change, Archbishop Williams formed the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston (CCAB) with a simple yet profound goal: provide hope by assisting those in need.

Over 100 years later, CCAB faced modern-day challenges: the organization had become too complex, mired by issues that didn't connect with its core mission. Staff was apathetic; the public, unimpressed, unsure of CCAB's true purpose. In short, CCAB had lost its way.

With fresh leadership in place as the Great Recession dug in its heels, resources were scarce. Catholic Charities’ future success depended on the alignment of the board, the leadership team, and employees in pursuit of its mission to serve Boston's neediest citizens. To guide them, CCAB developed a strategic plan of action to anticipate the road ahead with a big-picture understanding of how to return to greatness. The Balanced Scorecard served as a compass to allow management to holistically evaluate and measure impact. 

In September 2008, the first Balanced Scorecard report was provided to the board of directors. The report included a strategy map with red, yellow, and green indicators that revealed performance versus plan. Further information was provided through quantitative performance data and qualitative performance assessment and recommendations. Board members were so impressed by the initial comprehensive review that they gave management a standing ovation!

During the holiday season of 2009, CCAB was able to increase its food program recipients by 20 percent as over 90 percent of food requests were met. Press mentions, tracked monthly by the Archdiocese, increased, and Catholic Charities was increasingly called upon to serve as a voice and advocate of the neediest in a positive light. By focusing on the “critical few” measures and projects, Catholic Charities positioned itself to do more with less as it embodied its core mission. We think Archbishop Williams would be proud.

WHY CCAB DESERVED THE APPLAUSE

1. The Board aligned with leadership, which strengthened the agency
2. Successes and challenges were communicated and monitored
3. Middle management had a framework to align their activities with the strategy
4. Because resources were better allocated, programs were set up for success
5. Charities established a protocol for interfacing with the press to highlight the plight of Massachusetts’ poor
6. A clear strategy and measures of effectiveness in achieving that strategy became the cornerstone of large donor acquisition
7. Hard benefits became apparent about 18 months after the Balanced Scorecard implementation (sales and ROI increased significantly)

THE APPLAUSE CONTINUES TODAY
Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston was inducted into the 2012 Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy on Tuesday, October 16th, during Palladium’s Global Summit for Executing Strategy in Boston. Read our press release for more information. 

The election is (finally!) over, and we have just the thing to fill the void. (What’s that you say? You’re perfectly content with the sound of silence for the next month, at least?)

LET ME MAKE THIS EASY ON YOU.

Each year, we host a conference* for strategy and performance managers across the social and public sector. We host a slew of presenters and keynote speakers that you’ll be pleased to meet, listen to, and learn from. Not to mention, ASMG will moderate and host workshops that serve to build your skills in alignment, visioning, goal setting and milestones, and more. It’s the kind of focused event that you’ll walk away from with news you can actually USE.

We’re pretty proud of our Summit, because we make sure our speakers know their stuff, practice what they preach, and present ideas that relate toward your mission-driven organization. In other words, at the Mission-Driven Management Summit, it's here’s to you.

That’s why I URGE YOU to check out our website with the full agenda and details, and sign up before November 16^th–THAT’S 10 DAYS—to take advantage of can’t-beat, early bird pricing. And, with that in mind, over the next ten days I will count down with you, listing our top ten reasons the strategy Summit is the kind of event you’ll want to talk about (to your coworkers, your boss, your network….).

#10

Meet fellow strategists and performance managers across the Mission-Driven sector (school districts, municipalities, nonprofits, federal government, and NGOs) and expand your network while learning how others manage strategy and performance.

STAY TUNED FOR REASON #9 TOMORROW… and learn more at www.missiondrivensummit.com

* (and no, not one of those giant, tradeshow-style conferences, but a small, focused, two-day event that’s centered on content, not vendors)

I led a training session in New Brunswick Canada last week.  The participant feedback was generally very favorable.  But there is always one negative comment that gets my attention…..this time the comment that got my attention was, “the instructor was too knowledgeable.” Hmmm.  Then it occurred to me that strategy management, like any other discipline can sometimes get so sophisticated that the beauty of the simple idea gets lost.  I value the reminder.  The simple question is- Does your Balanced Scorecard (or your management program of choice) enable you to make strategic decisions that accelerate the achievement of your strategy? <more/>

Step 1.  Create a simple one page picture. 

We call it a strategy map.  But any picture that brings your strategy to life will do.  Make it so that management and staff alike will understand the direction of your organization.

Step 2.  Monitor a few measures

Maybe it is only five or ten. But not more than 15 measures.  Together they should tell you if you are achieving your strategy and if you are on track for the future as well.  If the measures don’t help you make strategic decisions they are not the right measures.  If they are too difficult to collect, they will not work in the long term.  Find the measures that work for you.

Step 3.  Determine if there are initiatives worth watching

If there are a few internal projects that will help advance the strategy (and the measures) it might be worth leadership watching progress.  This is really where the rubber meets the road – real work making a difference.  Be careful to keep operations separate.  Leadership as a group only needs to discuss strategy.

Step 4.  Data, Dialog, Decisions

All of this needs to inform strategy review meetings so leadership can look at performance data, have a constructive dialog about key issues and make decisions.  You know your team; you know what works and what does not.   Provide information ahead of time, equip leaders to contribute to the dialog and track decisions.

As I was listening recently to a client leadership team discuss the merits of “publishing” a high-level description of their strategy, I couldn’t help but think about the importance of the environment in which organizations operate and how different organizations can react differently to similar environments because of the attitude they have.

Here was the leadership team of a large department of a federal government agency discussing the pros and cons of publishing their high-level strategy document.  Those arguing against publication raised the concern that many other organizations “above” them in the hierarchy would take exception to the client publishing the strategy without their input.  They felt that without providing enough detail – which was still being worked on for later release – it would create more questions than it would answer and would cause the other government organizations to start giving direction where they thought it was needed.

Today's guest post comes from Evan Stisser, a MBA candidate at Cass Business School in London. Evan, who is working on his Master's thesis regarding Balanced Scorecard (BSC) implementation in nonprofit organizations, spoke with Ascendant's Managing Partner Dylan Miyake about Ascendant's nonprofit work and BSC best practices. Here's Evan: