Strategy-Focused Organization, The: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment Book

In their previous book, The Balanced Scorecard, Robert Kaplan and David Norton unveiled an innovative "performance management system" that any company could use to focus and align their executive teams, business units, human resources, information technology and financial resources on a unified overall strategy--much like businesses have traditionally employed financial management systems to track and guide their general fiscal direction. In The Strategy-focused Organisation, Kaplan and Norton explain how companies like Mobil, CIGNA and Chemical Retail Bank have effectively used this approach for nearly a decade, and in the process present a step-by-step implementation outline that other organizations could use to attain similar results. Their book is divided into five sections that guide readers through the development of a completely individualised plan created with "strategy maps" (graphical representations designed to clearly communicate desired outcomes and how they are to be achieved), then infused throughout the enterprise and made an integral part of its future. In several chapters, for example, the authors show how their models have linked long-term strategy with day-to-day operational and budgetary management, and detail the "double loop" process for doing so, monitoring progress, and initiating corrective actions if necessary. --Howard RothmanRead More