Quality Management Consultant
MOST organisations have inspiring vision statements.  A vision statement expresses what the organisation would like to accomplish and/or what it would like to be in the future. These organisations may also have mission statements. A mission statement succinctly describes the organisation’s purpose. Goals and objectives are later defined by the managers of each department and, most times, reviewed, ever so briefly, by top management at the annual planning and budgeting retreat.
Often, however, projects executed by departments are the result of the priorities of the day and are not necessarily linked to goals and objectives, mission, and vision that were discussed at the retreat. This lack of agreement among the stated vision, mission, goals and objectives leads to inconsistencies in the priorities set by managers and communicated to their staff. This inconsistency in message to staff makes difficult the task of introducing new thinking and concepts required to support a consensus around top management’s vision and strategy.
To achieve consensus, an organisation’s top management must look for ways of ensuring that all levels of their organisation understand and are aligned with their vision and strategy. One technique that most successful companies use to avoid the inconsistencies created by the lack of alignment is to employ a cascading process via the balance scorecard.
The cascading process is critical to the successful realisation of an organisation’s vision as the process links the vision with the mission and goals for each department, and cascades down to priority projects for each department to work on.
Alignment is important, as it is through this process that strategic direction is communicated and commitment from everyone is gained. By knowing the vision, mission, goals, and key projects arising out of the strategy, everyone in the organisation can gauge whether the work he or she is doing is contributing.

What is the Balanced Scorecard?
The Balanced Scorecard was first proposed by Professor Robert Kaplan of the Harvard Business School, and David P. Norton, President of Renaissance Solutions, in their 1992 article on “Using the Balance Scorecard s a Strategic Thinking Tool”.
The Balanced Scorecard is a strategic management tool that significantly aids the alignment process while guiding improvement efforts in the overall efficiency and performance of an organisation. The Balanced Scorecard is also a management-for-improvement-and-accountability tool that can be used to efficiently and effectively:
* clarify an organization’s vision and strategy
* communicate both vision and strategy throughout an organisation or to a government’s employees and its citizenry
* align department and individual goals
* link annual budgets to strategic objectives and long-term targets
* identify and align strategic initiatives, and
* conduct periodic performance reviews to learn about and improve strategy

The Balanced Scorecard is most useful to any entity, non-government or government, that is desirous of using information from financials and investments in physical assets, along with customers’ /citizenries’ perception data, to transform itself into an efficient and effective organisation.
Kaplan and Norton used the concept of a Balanced Scorecard to supplement financial measures with criteria that measured performance from three additional perspectives – those of:
* customers,
* internal business processes, and
* learning and growth.
It enabled companies to track financial results while simultaneously monitoring progress in building the capabilities and acquiring the intangible assets they would need for future growth. The scorecard wasn’t a replacement for financial measures; it was their complement.

The Four Management Processes of the Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard translates the vision and strategy of an organisation into action by introducing four management processes that link long-term strategic objectives with short-term actions by the managers and staff of an organisation’s departments.
In keeping with Kaplan’s balanced scorecard approach, the first management process focuses the organisation’s attention on four perspectives of its vision and strategy:
* Production and Finance
* Learning and Growth
* Internal Business Process
* Customer Relations

Effective communication is the emphasis of the second management process which focuses on communicating the priorities of the CEO and top management up and down the organisation and links the strategy to division, department and individual objectives. Staff must be part of a broad-based communication programme that encourages the top-down and bottom-up sharing of information on the strategy, division goals and objectives, and individual initiatives that would have to be realised if the strategy is to succeed.
Communicating the Balanced Scorecard objectives throughout the organisation promotes commitment and accountability to the organisation’s long-term strategy.
Business planning using the Balanced Scorecard is the objective of the third process where the strategic planning efforts and the budgeting process are integrated to ensure that the budget supports top management’s priorities. Measures of progress are selected from all four scorecard perspectives and targets set for each of them. The CEO and his top management staff then determine the actions necessary to drive the organisation towards their targets.

The ability to know at any point in the implementation process whether the strategy formulated by top management is working, and if not, why, is the focus of the fourth process, the feedback and learning management process. Performance measurement against balanced Scorecard target outputs, key outcome data related to costs, and the timely collection of key performance information in all core areas are regularly reviewed for feedback; reported to top management, and communicated to staff.

The scorecard supplies the essential feedback system which permits top management to use their periodic review sessions to evaluate the validity of the departments’ strategies and the quality of their execution. The reviews also allow top management to anticipate and respond to risks and opportunities within the business planning process.
Both the government and the opposition, the board of directors and chief executive officers of government agencies such as the Guyana Power & Light Corp., the Guyana Post Office and its many branches, the Guyana Sugar Corporation, and the Georgetown Public Hospital system, are encouraged to embrace the balanced scorecard principles.
By using the balanced scorecard principles, both government agencies and corporations can efficiently and effectively translate their vision and strategy into action by linking long-term strategic objectives with short-term actions of their various departments.  Further noteworthy benefits are:

– Improvement opportunities are sought from every level of the organisation’s staffing structure.
– Managers and supervisors understand the goals and objectives and, more importantly, they contribute unique insights to the risks and other challenges to the realization of stated goals and objectives.
– Employees’ individual performances are aligned with the overall strategy
– The scorecard influences managers to concentrate on improving or re-engineering those processes most critical to strategic success.
– Senior managers will be able to know at any point in the implementation process whether the strategy they have formulated is, in fact, working, and if not, why.
– The customer-centric focus leads to a breakdown of the traditional functional silos and the re-alignment of critical processes to customer demands.
To the government and business communities, I thought it important to share with you an effective tool for achieving alignment and enhanced levels of productivity. My hope is that government leaders and the top management of companies will consider using the Balanced Scorecard principles to deliver ever-improving value to stakeholders and also to enhance overall organisational effectiveness and capabilities.