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

Chapter 5

Step-by-Step from Strategy to Action

… the essence of strategy is in the activities—to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals.

—Michael Porter

Your Strategy Map gives you a clear illustration of your strategy. Now you must translate that strategy into action, for only by executing your strategy do you win. Your Strategy Map has multiple perspectives into your organization—Strategic Themes that focus energy and resources, and objectives designed to close the gaps between your present and future. This chapter guides you through translating the Strategic Objectives on the Strategy Map into initiatives. In later chapters, these initiatives become the actions you use to execute your strategy.

Turning Your Strategy Map into Measurable Action

In Robert Kaplan and Peter Norton’s Harvard Business Review article “Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System,” they describe a simple table that makes the translation from Strategic Objectives into action a process that is straightforward, although not without effort.1 Figure 5-1 shows an Action Plan that converts the objectives of one Strategic Theme into measures, metrics, targets, and initiatives.

Figure 5-1: Convert the objectives from each Strategic Theme in your Strategy Map into measures, targets, and initiatives.

The first column of the Action Plan is the Strategy Map ...