The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age

An Overview

First let me caveat this section. I aim here simply to give the briefest introduction to business performance management as encompassed by the Balanced Scorecard approach pioneered by Prof. Robert Kaplan and Dr David Norton. This introduction aims solely to be sufficient in helping me to communicate how our influence framework fits in. It cannot be in-depth, for that would take a whole book or five. Indeed, if you’re serious about getting up to speed on this management approach I recommend the following books, all by Kaplan and Norton, approaching them in chronological order until you’ve had your fill: The Balanced Scorecard (1996), The Strategy Focused Organization (2000), Strategy Maps (2004), Alignment (2006), and The Execution Premium (2008), all from Harvard Business School Press.

According to the Balanced Scorecard Institute⁹⁰:

The Balanced Scorecard transforms an organization’s strategic plan from an attractive but passive document into the ‘marching orders’ for the organization on a daily basis. It provides a framework that not only provides performance measurements, but helps planners to identify what should be done and measured. It enables executives to truly execute their strategies.

It is a management system (not only a measurement system) that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action.

Business 101 – the Problem

Here’s the problem with business 101 as it pre-dated the Balanced Scorecard. The objective of ...