BSC mistakes and choice of teamleaders
Implementation of balanced scorecard made a quite a long time. But, perhaps, the most important stage is development of BSC, key performance indicators and strategy maps. The company can adjust make a decision to implement balanced scorecard and start using it the next day. No way that can happen. Implementation of balanced scorecard is preceded by proper preparations. The company first needs to decide who will be responsible for development of balanced scorecard and who will be in charge. This seems like an easy question to answer but in fact it appears to be a great problem for many companies.
Some of major BSC mistakes
Formation of special working groups and teams is a very important step which needs to be taken in development of balanced scorecard. Moreover, these groups should consist of top specialists. Many companies are making a typical mistake of including only top managers to the working group in charge of BSC development. Of course, top managers know much about strategy and strategic planning, but some of them are far from operational level. Some top managers have never seen company customers, while head of sales department can tell a lot about customer groups. For example, chief HR manager knows how to improve organization climate and the company which will encourage personnel to show their best performance.
Working group members
That’s why it is extremely important that BSC team should be well balanced. Sometimes companies hire external advisors who have experience in implementation of balanced scorecard in other companies. But it happens that they simply use most typical balanced scorecard models which do not necessarily suit specific company needs.
Another important issue is managerial style. Experience shows that it is better to have a bad strategy but implemented in a proper way than to have the best strategy and do wrong things in order to reach strategic goals. Strategy can be changed but managerial style may remain the same. Some old school managers use old fashioned approaches to project management. Moreover, they consider balanced scorecard to be just another control tool. Of obviously, personnel will not like this idea, and balanced scorecard will be simply unused.
That’s why, it is extremely important to get personnel prepared to use balanced scorecard. And top managers should show their faith in this system and acquire new approaches. They have to change themselves in order to change the organization. Balanced scorecard should initiate changes otherwise the system will not work.
