Personal Balanced Scorecard

Citation

Narasimhan, K. (2007), "Personal Balanced Scorecard", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 93-94. https://doi.org/10.1108/mbe.2007.11.3.93.1

Hubert Rampersad, an international management consultant, has nearly 20 years of consultancy experience and is the author of 12 books. He wrote his international bestseller book Total Performance Scorecard (TPS) in 2003 and it has been translated in 22 languages. He is an editorial advisor to five refereed academic journals, published in Canada, UK, and Singapore.

This book on the Personal Balanced Scorecard (PBSC) is complementary to his earlier book on TPS. It helps managers and others to gain an insight into their self and align their goals with those of the organization they work for, to improve both their working and personal lives as well as improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the organization.

The book comprises nine chapters and two appendices. The first chapter is the introduction to book and briefly covers the part played by PBS in TPS, the learning objectives, and an overview of the contents of the book. The next three chapters deal with the concepts and form part I. The second part comprises 4 chapters on the application of the concepts and a concluding chapter that introduces the holistic PBSC cycle, for aiding the successful implementation of the whole PBSC system, and an epilogue.

In Chapter 2, Rampersad describes the essence (personal ambition, critical success factors, objectives, performance measures, targets and improvement actions) of PBSC. He uses practical cases to illustrate its various components. He also discusses the connections between the components, in the form of a cause and effect chain. He also introduces a method for prioritizing personal improvement actions.

The following chapter introduces the implementation of PBSC to achieve a step‐by‐step increase in happiness, awareness, enjoyment, learning, and creativity at work and outside. In the final chapter of Part I, Rampersad turns his attention to striking a balance between personal ambition and personal behavior for developing inner peace, personal charisma, improving personal integrity, trustworthiness, and ethical behavior. He also introduces a formula for gaining self‐knowledge. He also discusses how to achieve balance between personal ambition and shared ambition, in an organization, to stimulate commitment, trust, inner involvement and motivation of the other employees.

In Chapter 5, Rampersad shows how to align shared ambition and personal ambition to realize the “best fit” between an employee and the organization (s)he works for. He also shows how managers can conduct what he terms “ambition meetings” with the aid of human resources officers acting as facilitators. The purpose of such meetings is for managers and employees to share their PBSC and for individuals to take initiative for their own personal development based on the plan‐do‐check‐act cycle. He also discusses the importance of work‐life balance, as it not only improves employees' satisfaction, but also customer satisfaction.

The theme of Chapter 6 is business ethics and personal integrity and how it should form the basis of personal and shared ambitions. Chapter 7 is entitled “Rolling out the balanced scorecards” and deals with how to move from strategy to action by cascading the OBSC to the BSC of departments and teams, as well as to individual performance plans of individual managers and employees. The importance of linking and communicating scorecards is explained.

Effective talent management is the focus of Chapter 8, and covers issues such as individual performance plans, job‐oriented competencies, result planning, coaching, appraisal, and talent development.

Appendix I describes the TPS Soft™, a knowledge‐based and interactive heuristic software system, which aids management and human resources department with the implementation of PBSC and Total Performance Scorecard. Appendix II describes the TPS Life Cycle Scan that can be used to control the implementation as well as can be used for self‐assessment and certification.

Rampersad has blended both the eastern and western philosophies in this book, to help individuals attain the work‐life balance and organizations to become efficient and effective in meeting customer requirement. This book, along with his other books on TPS (for example, Self‐assessment Work Book, ISBN 0070635277), will be a very useful tool for managers of the future.