Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17531 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 322 pages

From the Author
How to use measurement systems to implement strategy.
We originally developed the Balanced Scorecard to improve performance measurement systems. The Balanced Scorecard retains financial measures, such as return-on-capital-employed and economic value added, and supplements these with new measures on value creation for customers, enhancement of internal processes, including innovation, to deliver desired value propositions to targeted customers, and the creation of capabilities in employees and systems. As companies developed and used their Balanced Scorecard, they soon made it the centerpiece of their management systems. Innovating companies today are using their Balanced Scorecards to (1) gain consensus and clarity about their strategic objectives, (2) communicate strategic objectives to business units, departments, teams, and individuals, (3) align strategic planning, resource allocation and budgeting processes, and, (4) obtain feedback and learn about the effectiveness of their strategic plan and its implementation. The book describes, in detail, the construction and use of the Balanced Scorecard as a strategic management system. Detailed case studies of how Chemical Bank, Mobil, and United Way of Southeastern New England are using their Balanced Scorecards can be obtained from Harvard Business School Publishing (1-800-988-0886).

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.

Customer Reviews

The text that brought performance measurement to the fore
One of the classic texts of the 1990s, the Balanced Scorecard has brought the importance of performance measurement to a generation of managers. It's still a worthwhile read, although more recent models, like the Performance Prism by Neely, seem much broader in scope.

Key Insights For Executives, Change Agents and Consultants
A much needed overview of why companies (and organizations) need a strategy linked to performance measures in a way that communciates the strategy throughout the organization. As much as I liked "The Balanced Scorecard" it is not as complete in the area of operations implimentation as I need when working with clients. I've found an excellent reference for operations managers to be "Operational Performance Measurement: Increasing Total Productivity" by Will Kaydos. Executives get the Scorecard, operations managers need different insight to make it work for them.

Overcome Poor Communications and Bureaucracy for New Actions
The Balanced Scorecard looks at the important issues of alignment, coordination, and effective implementation. Most business thinkers like to start with the big picture, and end there. As a result, most ideas for going in a new direction are quickly diluted by misunderstanding, falling back on old habits, and lethargy. Since Peter Drucker first popularized the idea of business strategy, there have been vastly more strategies conceived than there have been strategies successfully implemented as a result. Much attention has been paid to devising better strategies in the last four decades, and little to implementing strategies. The big pay-off is in the implementation, and The Balanced Scorecard is one of handful of books that provide important and valuable guidance to explain what needs to be done to successfully execute strategy. You must have more measures, and different measures than the accounting system provides. You also need to link measures and compensation to the key tasks that each person must perform. This book is simply the Rosetta Stone of communicating and managing strategy. The Balanced Scorecard is the beginning of the practical period of maturity in the field of business strategy. Read this book today to enjoy much more prosperity! I also recommend that you read The Fifth Discipline, The Fifth Discipline Handbook, and The Dance of Change to understand more about the context in which you are trying to make positive change. These four books are excellent companions for each other.

The series of books about The Balanced Scorecard includes The Strategy-Focused Organization and Strategy Maps. You'll love all three!