Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel, 2nd Edition

Part I

Strategic Performance with Balanced Scorecards

In This Part

• Chapter 1: Accelerating Strategic Performance
• Chapter 2: Developing Your Strategic Foundation
• Chapter 3: Preparing to Build Your Balanced Scorecard
• Chapter 4: Step-by-Step to Building Your Strategy Map
• Chapter 5: Step-by-Step from Strategy to Action
• Chapter 6: Step-by-Step to Selecting Metrics and Setting Targets
• Chapter 7: Step-by-Step to Developing Your Implementation Plan
• Chapter 8: Step-by-Step to Rollout and Strategic Reviews

Chapter 1

Accelerating Strategic Performance

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

—Michael Porter

The rate of change in the business world is accelerating. To get ahead—in fact, just to keep up—organizations of all types must accelerate their strategic performance.

They have to work with better performance, more precise focus, and better strategic alignment. For this to happen, all parts of the organization must clearly understand and be firmly aligned with strategic goals.

In the last two decades, a strategic management system has been developed that enables organizations to achieve the clarity and alignment necessary to accelerate strategic performance. That system is the Balanced Scorecard.

Managing with a 500-Year-Old System

Until recently, organizations have used the same accounting system to track assets and value production that was used 500 years ago in Venice, Italy. In 1494, Fra Luca Pacioli, Franciscan monk and friend of Leonardo da Vinci, wrote Everything about ...