Scorecard Best Practices

Align Human Capital to the Strategy

Strategy is usually set by the top‐level executives, yet it is executed by the first‐line managers and workers. To achieve strategy, it makes sense that the organization should foster a culture in which employees understand what the strategy is and how they personally can impact it, a culture that motivates them to want to impact it.

Tracey G. Schmidt of FedEx Express notes: The bottom line on great execution lies with people. You can have the best strategy and tactics, the best go‐to‐market and implementation plans, the most perfect cascade of measurements, but ultimately it comes down to this: Do people understand what we are trying to do? Do they understand why we are doing it? How we are going to do it? What's in it for them if we succeed? At FedEx Express, we believed that if our front‐line managers couldn't answer those four questions, then the tactical execution would probably fail.¹

To foster an environment of support for the scorecard system, often the culture must include accountability for strategy. The organization needs to align its people with the strategy and communicate that alignment. This means communicating who is accountable for parts of the strategy and the supporting measures. This step often serves as a wake‐up call to management and employees as the strategy is no longer a slogan on the wall or pages in a binder, but an actionable plan with names of real people associated with success or failure of each part of the plan. ...