Your company has elected to implement a balanced scorecard management process following the steps outlined by Kaplan and Norton. After examining the process closely, your company’s senior management team (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc.) decides to modify the process to make the steps more specific. First of all, they identified three different organizational levels involved in the process: senior management, middle management, and the rest of the workforce.
After a brainstorming session, they decide to break the five steps into pieces as follows: the formulate step would include
- assessing the company’s value proposition relative to the competition, and
- determining the appropriate elements of the value proposition to emphasize in order to achieve competitive advantage.
The translate step would include
- setting long-term strategic objectives for customer and shareholder value, and
- set priorities for long-term capital improvements necessary to achieve the long-term strategic objectives.
The Link step would then include
- establishing necessary IT initiatives,
- setting departmental budgets,
- implementing new IT systems, and
- operating business processes.
The monitor step would include
- produce reports to track performance, and
- review reports to evaluate performance.
Then, they decided to insert a new step, titled Adjust. This step would include making adjustments necessary to improve business processes, basically revisiting the Link to Operations step but making minor changes. If the adjustments failed to achieve objectives, then they would continue to the Adapt step to
- reconsider their assumptions about the competitive environment, and
- reconsider alternatives for those parts of the value proposition to emphasize to achieve competitive success.
Describe in writing whether you agree with your senior management team’s breakdown of the steps and the approach they propose. What would you do differently? Why?
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