From Publishers Weekly
As running a corporate?or government or not-for-profit?enterprise becomes increasingly complicated, more sophisticated approaches are needed to implement strategy and measure performance. Purely financial evaluations of performance, for example, no longer suffice in a world where intangible assets?relationships and capabilities?increasingly determine the prospects for success. Kaplan, a Harvard Business School professor of accounting, and Norton, president of Renaissance Solutions, make a key contribution by describing and illustrating the balanced scorecard, a multidimensional approach to measuring corporate performance that incorporates both financial and non-financial factors. The concept of a balanced scorecard originated in a study group of 12 companies that met throughout 1990; since then, the authors have worked with several companies, including FMC Corporation, Brown & Root Energy Services, Mobil and CIGNA, to create scorecards and use them as a systematic means to implement new organizational strategy. Though still in the preliminary stages of development, balanced scorecards could represent the emergence of a new era of management sophistication, in which both the hard and soft variables of work life are taken into account in a rigorous, testable fashion. Kaplan and Norton provide an excellent, though dry, introduction to a new methodology of management.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Kaplan (accounting, Harvard) and Norton, president of Renaissance Solutions Inc., created the "balanced scorecard" to assist businesses in moving from ideas to action, achieving long-term goals, and obtaining feedback about strategy. The balanced scorecard consists of four sections: clarifying and translating vision and strategy; communicating and linking strategic objectives and measures; planning, setting targets, and aligning strategic initiatives; and enhancing strategic feedback and learning. Because the writing is technically oriented and somewhat detailed, this work is geared toward scholars and high-level business planners. However, its clear organization makes reading and understanding the concepts much easier. Recommended for upper-level and graduate business students and senior practitioners in the strategic-planning field.?Randy Abbott, Univ. of Evansville Libs., Ind.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Here is an accounting text that requires absolutely no knowledge of methods and acronyms, but rather needs a strong business orientation to understand. What professor Kaplan and consultant Norton have created is a system that not only measures but, more important, manages such elusive corporate goals as mission, vision, customer and employee satisfaction, and the like. The "balanced scorecard" they've devised is based on long-term studies of five companies. The beauty of the scorecard is its reality-grounded perspective; the authors readily admit, for instance, that if such a system is put into effect, it will fail without the consensus of senior management. For organizations and their employees undergoing change. Barbara Jacobs
Book Description
Here is the book-by the recognized architects of the Balanced Scorecard--that shows how managers can use this revolutionary tool to mobilize their people to fulfill the company's mission. More than just a measurement system, the Balanced Scorecard is a management system that can channel the energies, abilities, and specific knowledge held by people throughout the organization toward achieving long-term strategic goals.
Kaplan and Norton demonstrate how senior executives in industries such as banking, oil, insurance, and retailing are using the Balanced Scorecard both to guide current performance and to target future performance. They show how to use measures in four categories-financial performance, customer knowledge, internal business processes, and learning and growth-to align individual, organizational, and cross-departmental initiatives and to identify entirely new processes for meeting customer and shareholder objectives.
The authors also reveal how to use the Balanced Scorecard as a robust learning system for testing, gaining feedback on, and updating the organization's strategy. Finally, they walk through the steps that managers in any company can use to build their own Balanced Scorecard.
The Balanced Scorecard provides the management system for companies to invest in the long term-in customers, in employees, in new product development, and in systems-rather than managing the bottom line to pump up short-term earnings. It will change the way you measure and manage your business.
Book Info
Provides the management system for companies to invest in the long term in customers, in employees, in new product development, and in systems - rather than managing the bottom line to pump up short-term earnings. DLC: Industrial productivity - Measurement.
From the Back Cover
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller
"A landmark achievement." --Michael Hammer, author of Reengineering the Corporation "Kaplan and Norton's pioneering Balanced Scorecard is required reading for those who seek to measure and manage successful business strategy. A landmark in the art of management." --Richard E. Cavanaugh, President of The Conference Board and co-author of The Winning Performance
About the Author
Robert S. Kaplan is the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Professor of Accounting at the Harvard Business School. David P. Norton is the president of Renaissance Solutions, Inc. They are the authors of three seminal Harvard Business Review articles on the Balanced Scorecard. Rating 4.0
redundant -- go back to the articleThe book rehashes the article for an extra couple hundred pages. I've got this book on the shelf, but when I want to talk about the Balanced Score Card concept, I go back to the article. tools that support Balanced Scorecard conception?I'm running a small consulting company and my prior goal was to identify what Balanced Scorecard is and in what way can I suggest it to my existent clients.
I've started learning BSC from "Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System", a Harvard Business Review article by Kaplan and Norton.
The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action is a great book, but it's far away from scorecard success step-by-step.
I've searched with google for Balanced Scorecard and related topics, but there was just "Kaplan and Norton wrote..." or "Our consulting company..." articles. Also, I've found Strategy2Act software, that seems to be a good point to start developing BSc.
My opinion is that it's a great book for every independent consultant. But there are a lot of job to translate this conception into something useful for real company.
For my opinion the good idea to start with is "connect everyone with strategy". It sounds like easy to do, but effective way to start using BSc ideas in company strategy.
Book that spawned a core business approachThis book is a seminal work that has significantly affected the way businesses frame and execute strategy. In a nutshell, the authors show you how to view your business strategy, drivers and key indicators in four dimensions - financial, external (customer satisfaction), internal (processes) and learning/growth. They then show you how to link these to your strategies and develop and execute plan for transforming them into action and results. The good and the bad. First, the good - before Kaplan and Norton published this book there was no standardized method for framing and measuring what's important. This book rectifies that. Also, the ideas first introduced have been embraced and extended to the point that a book search of similar titles returns over 2600 hits, and a google search using 'balanced scorecard' as a keyword returns ten time that many. This is a clear indication of how influential this book is and remains eight years after publication. But those are simple statistics. What's important about this book is many of the other resources that have sprang from it assume that you are familiar with the concepts and approach in this book. The bad - the writing style, as noted by others is ponderous. That does not diminish the concepts and approach. It is also showing its age, but only because of the body of work that this book has inspired, which has greatly extended and refined the basic ideas. You will still need to read this book to get the most out of the body of work that is based upon it. Also note that even Kaplan and Norton, the authors, have extended this work into strategy maps and a 'strategy-focused organization' paradigm. Overall this book has - and will continue to - influence thinking. The ideas set forth are still evolving and have been embraced by some of the largest (and smallest) companies on the planet. If you are new to this material I recommend visiting Balanced Scorecard Institute (ASIN B00006CKQ2) for introductory information, and Balanced Scorecard Online (ASIN B00006DBZ5) for more detailed material. |
