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Is there a best practice way to use the Balanced Scorecard in mangement meetings? Seems to me that it would be a natural fit for the meeting agenda, but I was wondering how else it can be used. |
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There are four primary 'types' of Balanced Scorecard application - for strategic management, for operational management, for monitoring and evaluation, and for the payment of incentives. Each type of application has specific characteristics that call for the use of a particular design approach, each different (and a common cause of failure is using the 'wrong' design process to develop your Balanced Scorecard). All of them work by triggering changes in behaviour in a team or individual, but the best mechanism for triggering these changes of behaviour will vary according to the type of Balanced Scorecard also. For a 'strategic' Balanced Scorecard then using it to set a meeting agenda is a proven and effective use of the information. But for operational Balanced Scorecards, sometimes 'dashboard' reports and alarms work better - for example using software to trigger an alert email that goes to concerned managers when a value goes outside a tolerance band. For monitoring and evaluation Balanced Scorecards, the timescales are quite different (typically this type of Balanced Scorecard is not used to 'manage' anything) and often the information is most useful communicated via a written report and / or slide show. For 'incentive' Balanced Scorecards, the information is usually linked to the activity of one person, and at best it might feature in a one-to-one discussion, but more often will be viewed by the individual and a simple clear report is all that is needed. Four uses, four different best practices for using the Balanced Scorecard. HTH |
