Building a scorecard - timing
03/25/08 4:38 PM

My boss just asked me to research building a BSC for our division. We are a $250 million division of a $3 billion organization. Our products and sales channel are independent of the parent company. We have a new president who is driving this change. How much time should we allocate to the BSC construction process? Also, can we just do this with books and articles or do you recommend outside support?

Thanks,

Martin.

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
03/26/08 8:18 AM

Martin,

Good luck with your new assignment. Be sure to educate your boss and think of the BSC as a management framework, and thus you are changing the management processes for your organization. Do not put this in a project box, or ultimately the BSC "project" will fail.

Typically it takes between 4-12 weeks to build a scorecard. This timeline is broad for a variety of reasons. Some organizations like to spend lots of time getting the first BSC exactly right, and the buy-in and measurement development process takes about 12 weeks. Other organizations decide to quickly draft a strategy map with measures and begin reporting right away. They modify their map and measures during the reporing process.

Personally, I think the best approach is somewhere in the middle, probably 6-8 weeks. You want to have a leadership team that is educated on what managing a BSC is all about, and you want to start reporting as soon as possible, to change behavior.

As for weather you can do this alone or not, I think that depends on your experience. Some organizations have had great success in implementing the BSC internally, and others have brought in outside consultants. Think about the culture of your own organization as well as the internal knowledge that you have. You can learn a lot via the web, articles, and books, but sometimes this learning can be accelerated by using outside help who brings tremendous experience to the table.

Good luck and let me know what you decide to do. Please keep posting to the community so that we can track your progress.

Ted
Partner, Ascendant SMG

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
03/26/08 11:36 AM

Martin -- In my experience, it's best to get started as soon as possible with your reporting meeting. What you absolutely don't want to do is to let the project get "stale" before your first meeting. I suggest that you get going with your first reporting meeting -- even if there are not measures defined -- within 2-4 weeks after drafting your map. It won't be perfect, but the process is what is important. -- Tina

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
03/27/08 2:41 PM

On that subject, we created our scorecard, and while it was a relatively quick process, we've made quite a few changes in our first few management meetings. I think it has worked out OK so far. I posted in another thread about our corporate HQ not having a scorecard.

Anyone have any ideas about inviting Sr. Management to these report meetings (these Executives are not even in our business unit)? What about inviting managers to the meetings that are outside of the business unit...but maybe not Senior.

--Jim

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
04/04/08 10:27 AM

Jim, it all depends on the meeting. I've had success inviting managers outside the business unit, but only after the executives are comfortable with the strategy and the process. You may want to let the process run a few months before inviting outsiders so that the executives have formed a cohesive team. -- Tina

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
04/04/08 11:07 AM

Jim,

Building a scorecard is definitely something you CAN do by yourself -- the question is SHOULD you do it yourself. The process of creating a scorecard has been pretty well documented in books by Paul Niven and the "Balanced Scorecard for Dummies."

But what I've found is that facilitating the meetings and the process can be of great value. An outside facilitator can be objective and overcome the internal politics at the meetings and can also make sure the process doesn't get bogged down.

That doesn't mean that you need to hire expensive outside consultants -- if you have an internal consulting team, they could help facilitate the process. But make sure they don't have an agenda that they're advocating and that they've done this in the past.

Samesh

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
04/24/08 2:46 PM

Samesh and Tina, helpful comments, but we are not looking for an outside facilitator, and we didn't even need the "dummies" book. We actually got most of our help directly from the Norton/Kaplan books. I was surprised at how much was "given away" in the books. Using that and attending a conference really helped me feel comfortable with the process.

I'm still working on selling the scorecard up to corporate.
-Jim

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
04/24/08 2:50 PM

Just wanted to give an update as it has been one month since I started on my business scorecard. We have a strategy map and had one big meeting on it. Most of the work was done offline in one-on-one meetings. I'm not sure we have complete buy in at this point, but it seems like I need to get measures for all of these. any pointers?

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
05/29/08 9:51 AM

I don't know if this reply is in time, but you do need measures for all of your objectives. We struggled early on with targets, but you need measures to be the best indicator of how you are doing in achieving your objectives. You will have lots of discussions about whether they are the right measures, but if you stay focused on the objective, you will come up with the right measures and targets over time.

Abdullah

RE: Building a scorecard - timing
08/11/08 7:24 AM

Check one of the other threads in this community about measures.