Winning Score: How to Design and Implement Organizational Score Cards

Citation

Narasimhan, K. (2002), "Winning Score: How to Design and Implement Organizational Score Cards", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 50-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2002.6.3.50.1

Mark Graham Brown is a management consultant with over 20 years consulting experience with corporations and government organizations. He is the author of three other books published by the Productivity Press. His clients include Motorola and the US Army. In this book, Mark explains the differences between mission‐related and vision‐related business performance measures and shows how to define vision‐related key success factors and implement them to improve organizational performance.

The book contains 13 chapters grouped into three parts and four appendices comprising four case studies from different types of organizations. The 15‐page introduction to the book deals with the difficulties encountered by organizations in implementing the balanced score card (BSC) measures that drive the right behavior from people in an organization. Mark briefly discusses the most common ten mistakes encountered and found damaging to the development and implementation of a scorecard.

Part 1, comprising four chapters, deals with the development of operational measures and plans to link with the mission of an organization. In Chapter 1, Mark reviews the process of defining an organization’s mission, with the aid of examples. In Chapter 2, he explains how to create and deploy value statements, i.e. an organization’s beliefs, ethics, and code of behavior, to guide employee decision making and activity. Selecting the right operational performance measures forms the core of Chapter 3. He explains how to design the overall structure of the scorecard and select the right metrics that link to the mission, based on Kaplan and Norton’s BSC and the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) models. In Chapter 4, some of the pitfalls in setting targets are discussed and guidance is provided on the correct methods to employ. The four chapters conclude with a checklist each to aid evaluating the mission statements, the organization’s values, mission‐related metrics, and targets and objectives.

Part 2 comprises six chapters and deals with developing strategic metric (based on indices) and plans. Developing performance indices by combining several measures is explained in Chapter 5. How to define an organization’s future state by a clear vision statement is covered in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 briefly explains how to conduct a strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis using the MBNQA criteria, and how to overcome the deficiencies in using the MBNQA criteria. In Chapter 8, he succinctly explains the difference between key success factors (KSFs) and strategies and, with the aid of examples, explains how to generate and select KSFs. Setting precise and valid strategic or leading measures linked to an organization’s vision and KSFs is the topic of Chapter 9. Also covered in some depth is how to measure intellectual capital and developing metrics that focus on innovation and risk taking for dot‐coms, in this age of knowledge management. In the final chapter of this part, Mark briefly explains how to avoid poor strategies and gives ideas for evaluating strategies for products, services, customer relationship, operational excellence, and departmental and functional strategies. .

How to implement the scorecard to improve performance forms the subject of Part 3, which comprises four chapters. Chapter 11 gives examples of measures for inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes, with the aid of a systems model of organizational performance; then, briefly explains how to design and evaluate data collection strategies for measuring them, followed by a brief consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of using various groups of people such as managers, peers, and customers, for evaluation and data collection. Systems for communicating performance data to aid decision making are the subject of Chapter 12. Four BSC software packages available on the market are reviewed in this chapter and a comparative summary is displayed in a table. In Chapter 13, Mark discusses why many scorecard initiatives fail and how to integrate organizational systems with the scorecard to improve the chances of success. In the final chapter he provides a step‐by‐step guide to designing and implementing a BSC in an organization and a checklist for evaluating the scorecard project plan.

In the Appendices, four fictitious case studies, covering both manufacturing and services, a government organization, and a support department, based on the author’s experiences are provided. Each case study starts with an overview of the scenario, descriptions of the scorecard and the author’s analysis of the case study, comprising an analysis of strengths, areas for improvement, and overall recommendations.

The book is well written, easy to read and comprehend. A short list of references is also provided for readers wishing to learn some of the concepts in detail. It is a must for the busy executive who would like to introduce BSC measures to improve the organization’s business performance, as this book gives practical examples.