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| by Len Tinkoff | 
At the close of 2005, you finalized your 2006 business goals and strategy. In January, your team entered the new year on an emotional high, as new roles, campaigns, technology, process initiatives, and performance measures were launched. February marks the point where the ability to execute must take hold, or you may risk inclusion with companies cited by CFO.com’s research: “Companies are delivering only about two- thirds of their potential due to failures in planning and execution.” Through ten years of research with over 500 CEO’s of America’s fastest growing companies, we know that the most profitable growing companies succeed by practicing just Three Growth Disciplines: having the Right People in the Right Seats; implementing the Five Effective Growth Practices; and having the Ability to Execute. Shortfalls in planning are typically addressed by the first two Growth Disciplines. You can learn more about them at www.GrowthStrategyPartners.com, or by attending one of our CEO Forums. This Growth Advisor addresses the Third Discipline, The Ability To
Execute, and specifically how the Balanced Scorecard and Business
Intelligence Technologies enable this.
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The Balanced
Scorecard provides a tool for making strategy visible, understandable,
measurable, and executable. Assuming that an appropriate strategy is in
place and that your team is aligned on your firm's initiatives and
measures, most problems with execution can be traced to a lack of
discipline and top-down and bottom-up communication.
To execute; tactics, initiatives, mid-course corrections, opportunities, threats and goals must be tracked, communicated, and addressed via a common language all can understand. The Balanced Scorecard helps achieve this by providing a visual map of your strategy. It succeeds via the reality that what is communicated, understood, and measured motivates organizational stakeholders to act. By driving behavior, it drives performance. Here's an oversimplified example of a Strategy Map and Balanced Scorecard. | ||||||
Strategy Map and
Scorecard Sample
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Dashboards track the progress of operational objectives, initiatives, processes, people, and partnerships toward goals. They alert management to issues requiring attention, and allow them to drill down into the meaning behind the data.
With accurate dashboards, enterprises can spot threats before they occur, and windows of opportunity before they close. Enterprises can begin to measure and manage via “Start small, iterate forward” Proof of Concept dashboards and reports built on their existing technology platform. Higher- capability Business Intelligence Dashboards and Technologies such as the one illustrated here can be funded via low cost/high ROI early wins. As the CEO of an award-winning construction company said, “The rapid and cost-economic implementation of Growth Strategy Partners’ approach has led to an increase in sold backlog of over 500%, and the identification of hundreds of thousands of dollars in process improvements requiring little to no investment. Profit generated through this initiative is now available to grow the business, and to expand into new areas of opportunity.” | ||||||
Dashboard Sample
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| Revenue Profit and Talent Growth |
Recognized as the Trusted Growth Advisor to the Inc 500, Growth Strategy Partners is a growth strategy consulting firm that helps entrepreneurially managed businesses to grow faster and more efficiently than they could on their own. Its services are differentiated by years of research into the practices of fast growing companies, translation of the three disciplines responsible for their success into rapid-results methodologies and tools, and consultants who are accomplished senior executives and business owners themselves. | |||||
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