Ted’s blog from Friday reminded me of one of the key moments in Ford’s turnaround as Bryce Hoffman described it in American Icon – and, no, we aren’t that nerdy that we have an Ascendant Book Club – not yet anyway.  When new Ford CEO Alan Mulally began holding his weekly management reviews with the executive leadership team, he was always getting good news – which was a bit suspicious as he had assumed leadership of a company trying to stay out of bankruptcy.

Mulally’s management reviews went on for weeks – maybe even months, I don’t completely remember – while he continued to receive rosy reports from his leadership team.  Until, that is, Ford Americas chief Mark Fields, who wasn’t sure if he was going keep his job at Ford under Mulally’s regime anyway, decided that he would “go out in a blaze of glory” and see if “this guy is for real” and true to his word that all he wanted was honesty.

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.

One of my favorite clients forwarded me an article from the McKinsey Quarterly last week called "Managing the Strategy Journey." He said that this article flowed nicely into what they were doing (with our help) with the Balanced Scorecard framework. The premise of the article is that you need to have regular strategy dialog at the senior leadership level.

Employee evaluations have always been a pet peeve of mine. I hate giving them, I hate getting them (part of the reason I started Ascendant was so that I would no longer have to get an annual review), and I find them to have little to no value. They're either used to document behavior that's well understood or to create a paper trail to eventually terminate someone. And everyone is above average. So what's the point?

Transparency is almost always considered an important characteristic of both good government as well as good performance management systems. Therefore, on the surface, the effort in New York State to have all teacher performance evaluations released to the public seems like a worthy reform of the state's public school system.

First, parents can see the performance evaluations of their children's teachers and prospective teachers. Second, teachers will improve their performance for one of two reasons: (1) the knowledge that anyone – their spouses, their neighbors, even their mothers – can see their performance evaluations or (2) parents will be allowed to "shop" for their children's teachers and poor performing ones will have no buyers.

Twenty years ago, in 1992, Harvard Business Review published "Balanced Scorecard -- the Measures That Drive Performance." Seemingly obvious now, the article argued that companies need to measure more than just financial and operational measures to succeed. By looking at a "balanced scorecard" of financial, customer, process, and people measures, organization could more accurately understand the drivers of performance.

It's hard to believe, but we're already planning for the 2013 Mission-Driven Management Summit, just a short nine months away! We're returning to the fabulous National Press Club in Washington, DC on March 5-6, 2013. With that in mind, we're putting out a general "call for speakers" to present at next year's conference.

For private sector organizations, it's usually pretty easy to figure out the ultimate measure of success -- it's usually some proxy for profitability -- either earnings per share, revenue growth, or share of market. But for the clients we work with, it's often a bit harder. While we can usually define the strategic objective pretty clearly, it's harder to define the measure behind it.

In my two decades of consulting in the area of strategy management I have encouraged many organizations to hire an in-house performance management professional. I have observed it is often difficult for organizations to create a new position and recruit for a position that has not existed in the past. Why has it taken so long for performance management to become a recognized discipline? Who knows? But is seems our day has come. All three sectors: government, nonprofits and private sector have recognized their need for formal performance management! Performance management professionals can now find jobs in their field and organizations can now find experienced talent in performance management!

The US Federal Government took a huge step forward when it announced an update to the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993. GPRA Modernization Act 2010. The GPRA Modernization Act requires every Government Department have a Performance Improvement Officer. It also called for the creation of the Performance Improvement Council which holds bi-monthly meetings, shares best practices and sponsors active working groups to address issues of interest to its members. Watch for Office of Personnel Management to soon formalize a performance management job descriptions and career paths. Until then, keep your eyes peeled for an increasing number of job openings in performance shops across the government. Non-profits or charities have also come to realize the importance of performance management. Donors, government funders and communities now demand transparency and results. Data collection, analysis and informed decision making are becoming the norm rather than the exception. I was thrilled to see that Bridgestar that has long been the clearing house for nonprofits looking for Chief Operating Officers recently provided guidelines on how to hire a performance professional. Finding Your First Measurement Director

It is hard to believe it has been years since Kaplan and Norton first called for the creation of an executive role of Strategy Management Officer as the cornerstone of a Strategy Focused Organization Strategy Management Officer. but it is a position I frequently see. CEOs have come to realize that there needs to be someone overseeing strategy management rather than strategy development.

So, if you are an organization seeking a team member with performance management capabilities rest assured they are out there and they have experience! If you are one of those professionals out there who has developed some expertise in the performance management arena. Take heart, more and more organizations have come to recognize their need for your talents!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had a major story last Sunday on the apparent prevalence of cheating in major urban school districts across the country. This investigative article was spurned by work the AJC did in Atlanta -- under the premise if the results were too good to be true, they probably were. Unfortunately, cheating of the nature discovered in Atlanta and suspected around the country hurts those who can least afford to be hurt -- children with already marginal educational opportunities.