Benjamin Franklin’s balanced scorecard

Benjamin Franklin is known as a great American leader and diplomat. He was a signatory to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

He is less well known for the little scorecard he devised, which is a shame because it is quite something: balanced and still instructive.

Benjamin Franklin developed a plan with 13 virtues he wanted to live his life by. He monitored his plan using a small grid containing the days of the week and initials for the 13 virtues.

He gave each virtue one week’s focus so that after 13 weeks he had worked on all 13. After 13 weeks he would start the process over again.

He kept a little book and every evening he would review the day and put a dot next to a virtue when he considered he had failed to live up to its qualities.

His goal was to live without having to put any marks on his chart. To start with his charts had lots of dots, but in time they grew clearer. Eventually he reduced his dependence on the charts, but he always carried the little book with him as a reminder.

He followed the plan to the age of 79 when he wrote about it. He said that he was even more determined to stick with it for his remaining days because of the happiness he had enjoyed by following it.

Benjamin Franklin's 13 virtues are quite unique and unfortunately rather out of fashion. Yet they obviously served him well since he is one of the most respected and most accomplished men in the history of the United States.

His determination to live a good life, and his methods of achieving his goals, are instructive to anyone interested in Performance Management.

His 13 virtues, each with short descriptions, are given below:

1. Temperance: Eat not to dullness and drink not to elevation.


2. Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.


3. Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.


4. Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.


5. Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e. Waste nothing.


6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.


7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.


8. Justice: Wrong none, by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.


9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forebear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.


10. Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes or habitation.


11. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; Never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.


12. Tranquillity: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.


13. Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Who's that girl?

How long does it take to become successful at something?

There is a temptation to think that Performance Management is a silver bullet. Nothing could be further from the truth. Performance management is a tool – a very useful tool, but it’s not a substitute for persistence and determination.

I’m reminded of Picasso who apparently was once asked by a fan to draw something on a napkin. The story goes that Picasso agreed but requested a sizeable sum before parting with the sketch. The admirer was shocked and asked Picasso how he could ask so much for something that took so little time to create. Picasso replied that it had taken him over 40 years.

A genius like Picasso was no overnight success – so what hope for you and me?

You might have noticed that the blog is looking a little happier today. That’s thanks to my very own Picasso – John Cassidy; photographer to the stars and talented business people. I spent some time with John last week, and learnt a few things I didn’t know about how to take fabulous shots of David Beckham, Sean Connery and Caroline Eveleigh (spot the celebrity in that list!).

John has been taking professional photographs for over 20 years focusing on the military, sports personalities and business people. He has worked in over 100 different locations - from the Falkland Islands, to Norway; Malaysia to Kuwait and back again. When not taking photographs of people he has photographed some seriously impressive jets: Jaguars, Tornados, Hawks and Harriers. And oddly enough you have to keep up with a jet to photograph it, which means travelling faster than the speed of sound in another seriously impressive jet. Some people have great jobs, don’t they?

John has taken over 100,000 images of celebrities, and over 500,000 images of business people. That’s significantly more than half a million images to get maybe 10,000 photographs that have been published in national newspapers, magazines, and journals. That’s a lot of photographs, a lot of smiles, and a lot of awards for his work.

This is performance management in action, driven by passion not scorecards.

John is good fun to work with and has an impressive portfolio of work. When he isn’t shooting people or jets, he also blogs about the life of a photographer.

My only complaint is that he didn’t introduce me to Thierry Henry. Maybe next time?

The Vision Thing

Why a defined strategy is crucial to performance management

I’m about to give a speech at my local Toastmasters club and I have chosen a rather controversial topic. I will argue, fairly or unfairly, that Barack Obama didn’t have enough of The Vision Thing in his inauguration speech. I have no doubt this will be deeply unpopular.

Obama is remarkable in many ways – not least in his ability to deliver a mighty fine speech. And right now what America needs most is a visionary president.

Part of my reason for choosing this subject wasn’t because I thought Obama needed a bit of help, but that it reminded me just how important vision and strategy is to performance management.

Without a strategy you cannot compare performance, good or bad, to anything. In fact, without a strategy you don’t really know what you should be doing when you get out of bed in the morning.

The ubiquitous scorecard has become a powerful way of monitoring performance in companies and public sector organisations alike. And many have implemented the Balanced Scorecard, created by Kaplan and Norton during the 1990’s.

The Balanced Scorecard is remarkable for two reasons.

1. It monitors four areas of a business: financials, customer focus, internal focus and learning & growth.
2. It encourages measures to be derived from strategy.

I often wonder whether what gets remembered most from their work is the four quadrants, and not the link to strategy. Yet it is the latter which is the more powerful, and at the time was the most ground breaking.

When a company first starts to implement the Balanced Scorecard they often find that their strategy isn’t defined as well as they thought. It prompts debate, arguments, refinements, and more debate. In fact some companies purposefully bypass the strategy step because they know it will be difficult. But once strategy is agreed there is a forward motion that almost takes on a life of its own. Good measures become easier to identify, and performance management becomes a whole lot easier.

I still don’t think we had enough of the Vision Thing in the inauguration speech and shall argue my case despite any frosty looks. But my personal silver lining was that it prompted me to look at my own company’s vision statement and make some necessary revisions.

That Vision Thing matters.

Count what you can manage

Numbers improve creativity

As an avid reader, and a loyal follower of Mariella Frostup’s Book Show, I am fascinated with how authors produce their work.

What strikes me about authors’ working habits is how often numbers occur in answer to interviewer’s questions about how they produce their books. Writing is a creative process – yet authors appear to be methodical and systematic.

In his book ‘On Writing’, Stephen King says that he writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays. I wonder whether my idea of a holiday is the same as Mr King's, but his disclosure is nonetheless impressive.

Here are some comments made by the Book Show guests about how they work:

“I can really focus and just get on with writing my 1,000 words. Then I get to spend the rest of the day playing with the babies…” Jenny Colgan (best selling chick-lit author, mother, and blogger extraordinaire)

“I always start the day by going into my office at about nine o’clock. This is where I work on my four books a year. When I’m writing a book, I write about 3,000 to 4,000 words a day; I don’t really have to think about what’s going to happen in the books: it just seems to come from my subconscious mind. I write for two to three hours and then I come out of the ‘trance’, as it were.” Alexander McCall Smith author of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency

“My working day starts at about 2.30pm and continues on through to half past six or seven o’clock, when I stop because I’m knackered.” William Boyd – prize winning author and film writer

“I’ve got these files here and then I’ve got my marvellous patterned notebooks. I’m absolutely devoted to them. I must have about 200 by now, ‘cause I do about 20 for each subject.” Lady Antonia Fraser – historical biographer

J G Ballard, who wrote the cult novel ‘Crash’ was reported in The Times as saying:

“I try to write about 1,000 words a day in longhand and then edit it very carefully later before I type if out. I have been known to stop in the middle of a sentence sometimes when I've reached my limit. But self-discipline is enormously important; you can't rely on inspiration or a novel would take ten years.”

Performance management in action

This is Performance Management in action. The numbers – whether the hours they work, the number of words or pages they write, or the research notebooks filled – are part of the creative process.

Of course the numbers themselves don’t make the stories more gripping or their characters more life-like. They don’t compensate for poor grammar, or improve their spelling. But they do allow the authors to improve all of these things by the regular, systematic, and consistent application of their creative energies.

The numbers enable these authors to manage their creativity. They are conscious of when is the best time of day to write. They understand their own personal balance between targeting a number of words, and keeping up the quality of what they write. They set their own targets with words, pages and books –authors’ equivalent of a KPI.

Best selling lessons for business

All the authors I’ve quoted are best-selling authors. By literary and commercial standards they are successful. Their scorecards are filled with the number of words they write each day, the number of hours they work, how they edit, their research notebooks, and how they get started when faced with a blank sheet of paper. The book sales then follow.

In contrast, business people often start with the sales figures. “This year we are targeting sales of the XYZ product to be 1,000 units a month …” Business scorecards are filled with sales revenue and profit targets. Whilst these figures absolutely have their place, they are not the figures that business managers are actually able to manage. What we can manage is the efficiency with which we produce our products or services. We can decrease defects, or increase features. We can improve distribution or marketing communications, etc.

Metrics for creative types

The concept of applying “cold, hard numbers” to creative processes such as man management or writing isn’t intuitive. Metrics appear too stark, too simple and don’t convey the ambiguities of day to day business or the plot of a novel.

In reality they convey a great deal. The writer knows that a day that produced 1,000 words is moving them closer to their finished book – even if they eventually have to re-write every word.

Equally, successful managers think carefully about the key metrics in their business, and then ensure they are monitored and improved regularly. Because of course that’s the whole point. By creating targets and measuring the key parts of the process we are able to improve on what we do: improve the process, and the deliverables. Clever people, authors.

All things measurable

Does the world need another blog? Not exactly; but it’s got one anyway.

Welcome to Getting to Excellent!

Getting to Excellent will be thoughts, rants and ramblings about the world of performance management, business intelligence, key performance indicators, scorecards, dashboards, metrics, and all things measurable as well as a few things that won’t be measured.

I’m a Microsoft Certified Professional, a systems analyst and obsessive about how numbers help us to do better. I’m a Toastmaster, a yogini, and stubbornly dreadful at French. I’m also fortunate enough to have worked with and for some of the world’s most capable companies.

And for what it’s worth I passionately believe that performance does matter: both good and bad performance. I believe we all have a deep seated desire to do well in our chosen fields and that understanding how to do better is important. Important for individuals, teams, businesses, and public sector organisations.

So I’m going to write about it. Here. In Getting to Excellent. The world’s new blog. That it didn’t necessarily want. But got anyway.