Introduction
Robert Kaplan and David Norton popularized the
Balanced Scorecard twenty years ago. Its simple, visual framework helps
organizations depict linked sets of goals that define strategy. Today, with new
mindsets, practices, and technologies, people have more opportunities to engage
in helping their organizations envision the future. The scorecard, however, can
at times seem like an Easter Island statue, offering mute, impenetrable witness
to firm performance. In this article Doug Collins explores opportunities for
people to bring alive the scorecard by applying the practice of collaborative
innovation.
What Does Success Look Like?
Every leader at times fears that the people in
the organization do not have a shared understanding of vision and mission. They
grasp the importance of getting everyone on the same page. They communicate
goals at every opportunity. They commission banners for the lobby, coffee mugs
for the desk, and t-shirts for the torso.
Leaders with this mindset embrace the Balanced
Scorecard to share organizational intent. The scorecard offers simplicity. It
lends itself to visual storytelling. One can, over a cup of coffee, use the
scorecard to engage a colleague on the value the organization aspires to
deliver to the customer and what the organization must do to do so.
Yet, obstacles limit the scorecard’s use. A
cottage industry of consultants has created a variety of multi-step
methodologies to implement the scorecard. Information technology groups
transform the scorecard’s simple, visual approach into nested dashboards that
mimic the flight deck of a Boeing 747. Complexity deters people from trying to
create a basic scorecard of their own, which defeats its purpose.
At the same time, the practice of collaborative
innovation invites leaders, acting in the role of campaign and challenge
sponsors, to frame and reframe the critical questions facing the organization.
The scorecard can provide highly relevant context for this activity. In turn,
the practice can engage the organization in reaching a shared understanding of
intent.
In this chapter I create a simple example to
show a way in which leaders can engage their organization—and, by extension,
bring the strategic planning process alive—by tying the scorecard to the
practice of collaborative innovation.
By way of reference, Arthur Van Gundy explored
this linkage in his stellar book on framing innovation challenges, Getting
to Innovation. Kaplan and Norton describe the Balanced Scorecard in
their classic article
on this subject.
Telling Your Story
Imagine you run a consulting practice that
advises retailers on where to open and close their stores. You serve clients
within a couple hours’ drive of your office. You have built a good base over
ten years and have worked with all the major, local players. You find that you
can grow the business by more deeply engaging clients who value the quality of
your work, but who buy your services piecemeal, by project, today.
Internally, your organization employs many
highly educated and experienced people who pursue a variety of practices to
deliver value to the client. They engage on matters ranging from optimizing
site configurations to facilitating envisioning sessions that help clients gain
perspective on the next generation of storefront design.
You note that while your team members enjoy
cordial relations with one another, the specialized nature of their work causes
them to engage the clients as individuals, from the consultative sales process
through to the delivery of your services offerings. You see that this silo
approach discourages deeper, firm-wide engagement with clients.
In response, you draft a simple scorecard that
you use to engage people to gain their perspective on the firm’s direction
(figure I2-1).

Innovating the How
You find that sitting down with people to
discuss the scorecard works very, very well. People in your organization come
from the worlds of architecture, design, and display. They resonate with the
simple, visual approach. They value the opportunity to engage on the critical
question of firm-wide intent.
You observe that your talks spawn impromptu
ideation sessions around the connected levels that comprise the scorecard. Your
people use their firsthand knowledge of the clients to explore possibilities
for building thought leadership with customers, for example, and for assigning
targets to that strategic goal.
These engagements encourage you to open the
conversation to all members of the organization, many of whom work from home or
at client sites. You decide to embrace the practice of collaborative innovation
and pursue the internally focused,
enquiry led form.
Where to start? I offer the following guidance.
Start now. The perfect time to start the
strategic conversation never comes. The uncluttered group calendar remains as
elusive as the Loch Ness Monster during Scottish high season.
Start at any level of the scorecard—unless your
organization confronts a burning platform that everyone knows they must address
to live another day (e.g., the loss of a major client or a severe shortcoming
in quality). If you are lucky enough to have a burning platform, then use it as
the focus for collaborative innovation. Common sense suggests you will find a
lot of energy throughout the organization in terms of how best to extinguish
it.
The conversation you encourage around the
scorecard provides the value. The conversation opens the door to people
engaging on and reaching a shared understanding of intent.
Returning to our example, you might link the
practice of collaborative innovation to your scorecard as follows, by framing
one of the following critical questions, each of which maps to a level (figure
I2-2).

Per figure I2-3, I find that the scope of the
ideas that people contribute in response to the questions that you pose tends
to widen as you move from the learning and growth level to the financial level.
The people who participate in the collaborative innovation activity think in
more conceptual terms at the higher level in forming their ideas and comments.
The learning and growth and the internal business process levels tie more
directly to their firsthand knowledge, leading to more concrete ideas.

To this end, your practice of collaborative
innovation may yield more insights for the near term when you start at these
levels and more insights for the longer term when you start with the customer
and financial levels. Both work as valid places to start. Rely on your
discretion to know where to begin.
Regardless of where you start, you will want to
refer the people who participate in the activity to the scorecard. Providing
that view enables them to think holistically—strategically—as they form their
ideas and comments. The results and behaviors you observe in your first
challenge will guide you where to go for your next challenge.
Final Food for Thought
The Balanced Scorecard contains no magic. Using
it does not guarantee you a compelling strategy. However, it is powerful. Its
power lies in its simple, visual clarity. Its simple, visual clarity invites
discussion. Engagement.
Applying the practice of collaborative
innovation to extend that engagement across the organization makes sense when
people work remotely, when people work in functional silos, and when people
find themselves at odds in terms of envisioning a shared, better future.
As the leader of your organization, you bring
many gifts to the table, including the gift of insight. Do not refrain from
taking pencil in hand to sketch your organization’s scorecard as a way to begin
the critical conversation. Do not refrain from opening the conversation to the
organization at large on both the elements that comprise the strategy and the
measures of those elements by applying the practice of collaborative
innovation.
We live in an increasingly connected, engaged
world. You reach your leadership potential as you learn how to convene and
structure conversations whereby all the engaged parties can create a shared
understanding of strategic intent—of that better future. Combining the
scorecard with the practice of collaborative innovation gives you a powerful
approach for leading in modern times.
Article first appeared in Innovation Architecture Book 1: A New Blueprint for Engaging People Through Collaborative Innovation, available in e-book format on Amazon and Apple.
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