Walk a mile in your customer’s shoes

There are two advantages to walking a mile in your customer’s shoes. Firstly, you will be a mile down the road before your customer realises you have his shoes. Secondly, you will know a lot more about your customer’s problems, opportunities and difficulties. The second reason is more important, although I don’t really recommend stealing customers’ shoes for either reason.

We spend a great deal of time thinking about our own problems, difficulties and the potential opportunities for our businesses. Then we go out into the world to sell what we have to offer. We just know that the world will beat a path to our door because we’ve spent so long working on it, thinking about it, and getting it right. Meanwhile, our customers have been having their own issues, their own problems and their own worries. When the world doesn’t stampede us in their eagerness to get hold of what we have to offer, we are left bemused.

So turning around and looking at the world from your customer’s viewpoint is tremendously valuable. Our products and services are designed to let someone else to make the best of an opportunity, to solve a problem or to improve their lives in some way. Of course we are in business to make a profit on what we sell, but unless we can really understand why customers need what we sell, we will not build the best possible business - for ourselves or for our customers.

K&H: Metrics to make accountants happy

Key performance indicators have a dramatic effect on one professional services firm

Kirkpatrick and Hope was, until 2003, a very traditional sort of accountancy firm. They could do your accounts or handle your tax affairs as well as the next accountants. Which is a problem for many professional services firms – how do you differentiate yourself from your competitors and resist pressure on pricing? In this case it took a ruptured Achilles tendon and extended leave from the office to give time for strategic planning. Kirkpatrick and Hope was reborn as K & H with a new identity, a new affiliation to the AVN network, and a new enthusiasm for the future.

In 2005 a group of partners led a management buy-out after the last founding partner decided to sell. They had new ideas and a new vision. After years of lacklustre results, low morale and disagreements, they had a new strategy and a new way of doing business.

Andrew Gray, Chairman of K&H, explained to me how they implemented their new strategy.

“Our mission is to improve the lives of small business owners. Many entrepreneurs work incredibly hard for their customers and don’t have time to step back and consider their own business. Important issues such as pricing, marketing, or increasing profitability don’t get much of a look in. Whilst accountancy is still the heart of our service, we take every opportunity to encourage owners to think about their results, and how they can improve their businesses.

The culture change within our own firm has been dramatic. Advising on planning, profitability, pricing, and business development are now a core part of our service, not an add-on. And internally we had to learn to walk the talk, which meant putting in place new processes and performance metrics to measure how we are doing.”

When I asked Andrew what was the single most important measure, he smiled.

“That has to be our happiness score - when you have a team that works well together, so much else falls into place. Every month we ask everyone to complete a 360 degree feedback form, and score their happiness at work on a scale from 0 to 10. We have seen a dramatic shift from the early days, when the average was around 5. Now we consistently score a happier 8 or 8.5. We are not romantics though – it is still work and there will always be some parts of everyone’s workday which isn’t particularly enjoyable. We don’t aim to protect people from that. We frequently challenge people to push outside of what they might feel comfortable with. But as a management team we are now agreed on values, we have clear objectives, and consistently measure our performance using key performance indicators. It really does have a big impact on people’s happiness at work, and their performance. It has made more of a difference to our overall business performance than I would have guessed.

It hasn’t been plain sailing, of course, and I’ve learnt that you can’t change people. If they don’t agree with your values and direction, then it’s best just to part company. That’s a lesson I wish I had learnt a lot earlier.

On the plus side, however, our “one page plan” has really helped focus everyone on what is important. We use it to report results each month and whilst it wasn’t easy agreeing what to measure, it has played a major part in turning things around. I couldn’t imagine running the business without it now. Whereas before we would focus 100% on financial measures, now more than 50% of our metrics are non-financial: staff happiness, lead generation, and what type of services our clients buy from us, etc.

We have seen the difference that good metrics make to the business, and are now prepared to invest in new systems to cut down on the time we spend collating them.”

I asked Andrew if he thought other businesses make good use of metrics.

“I think people often measure some aspects very well, but are blind to other areas. Many people don’t have the time to think about what results they really want, and how to get there. Some people are specialists in their own business, but don’t know where to start in putting a measurement system together.”

So to finish, I asked Andrew what his advice to business owners would be on performance metrics.

“Start small – just choose one or two measures and report on them consistently. Don’t be too ambitious in changing things.” He smiled again. “Which is funny really, because we dived in and introduced more than 20 measures all at the same time!”

Andrew Gray, Chairman of K&H,heads up a team of 19 happy accountants, tax advisors and business advisors all of whom are passionate about helping ambitious business owners/managers create a better future for both business and for their families.

40 years of Northern Ballet Theatre

The evening of the 5th December 2009 will not be easily forgotten by Northern Ballet Theatre. Current and past dancers performed together in a one-off performance of A Christmas Carol with many more ex-Northern Ballet Theatre dancers in the audience. It was as emotional as it was spectacular, and celebrated 40 years of Northern Ballet Theatre.

Stars past and present were greeted by rapturous applause by those who knew and love their dancing. The joie de vivre which naturally emanates from this talented and fun company was overflowing. Jeremy Kerridge in the title role brought home the very essence of Dickens’ important little tale.

As a northerner myself I was quite overcome by the brilliance of what they pulled off on Saturday. They are polished and professional, but also humorous and original; this is a company that never fails to bring a smile to everyone’s face.

Northern Ballet Theatre has gained a loyal and admiring audience by understanding their strengths and weaknesses. They play to their strengths and minimize their weaknesses to great effect. Their repertoire does not try to emulate the big ballet companies – The Nutracker is replaced by A Christmas Carol and Peter Pan. Swan Lake is somewhat different from the classic version. Sleeping Beauty is absent, making room for the less obvious Dracula or Wuthering Heights. Instead of going head to head with the competition, they change the rules. They have fun with their strategy as well as their ballet.

Understanding strengths and weaknesses is a foundation stone for success, whoever you are. It is wonderful to see the dry SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) put to use in such an entertaining way. It reminded me that whatever our talents, everyone has a role to play.

It is up to all of us to figure out our own individual strengths and weaknesses, as well the teams we work in and the organisations we represent. That clarity will help lift our individual and team performance, and build better organisations. Even if we didn’t get to be a ballet dancer when we grew up.

An abuse of power

The UK is today without a postal service. Their 120,000 strong unionised workforce is angry at their management’s reforms of the business and so has gone on strike.

The head of the Communication Workers Union Billy Hayes believes he is in a stronger position than Arthur Scargill and the coalminers in the 1980’s. Hayes has sweetly pointed out that you cannot stockpile post. Hayes and his merry men have threatened more strikes as the festive period approaches. I'm guessing this is a man who never read How to Make Friends and Influence People.

Hayes might have forgotten that the miners’ strike did not end happily. I doubt this one will either.

The world is changing. Indeed the world has already changed. During the Great Strike of 1926, newspapers were not delivered, but there was enormous support for the miners.

Today the support is for the alternative suppliers who are prepared to deliver our mail, and outrage at the postal workers’ action. At the heart of the need for modernisation is the vast change that has swept across all forms of delivery services, namely the internet. Whilst I may not be getting any post today, my inbox is as full as ever and promotional paper mailings are simply being replaced by their electronic email equivalents.

Providing an excellent service that people want to use is the only way that this war will be won: an option the union doesn’t seem to have considered.

Holding the country to ransom, putting up prices and reducing service levels is a strategy that appears to have some serious flaws. Abusing power rarely, if ever, has a good outcome.

Putting the boot in: sustainability

As I stood in the shoe repair shop on Saturday I realised that my boots are not sustainable. They were not sustainable from the moment I bought them, even though I love them to bits. Their total lack of sustainability comes from them requiring heeling every three or four weeks. You would have thought after the years I have been taking them to be heeled it might have dawned on me how impractical the boots were, but it did not. I have been walking around in un-sustainable boots.

Sustainability is being able to keep something in balance for the long term. When something is out of balance, sooner or later something will happen to attempt to regain the balance: just as we have seen with inflated consumer spending, the recent financial crisis and subsequent recession. As we are increasingly recognising the importance of climate change, the fragility of our environment, and how to generate clean energy, sustainability is a word we need to take more notice of.

My boots made me think of my other practices that are not particularly sustainable: using the printer a little more often than I should, trying the replicate the British Library in my office, etc. etc. There are more, but I will spare my (and your) blushes.

I doubt that I am the only person who is recognising that sustainability and balance are more important to us than ever before. I think sustainability is an idea whose time has come, not only in taking control of the planet’s future, but in taking control of our own personal and business future.

As consumers we have drastically cut our spending and reassessed priorities. As businesses we are digging in, cutting back and working hard to survive during difficult times. As societies we have become more aware of cause and effect, and thanks to the state of the economy we are being given long enough to reflect on sustainability for lasting changes to be made.

Sustainability is not always a simple concept – there is plenty of opportunity to push problems around. But it is a concept that is worthy of a great deal more thought than we have given it in the past, whatever the economy is doing.

How to get better at just about anything

Performance management is just a posh way of saying: “how do we get better at what we do?”

Assuming that what you do is important to you, your department or organisation, there is enormous benefit to be gained from improving your performance. It’s more fun to produce high quality work, rather than having work corrected or rejected. It’s also more profitable – whether you count profit in monetary or satisfaction terms.

It used to be assumed that our talents and innate capabilities determined how good we could become in a given field, but more recent research has challenged such views. It would be difficult to become exceptional at something for which you have no innate abilities, however. I would never make a world class navigator, for example: my ability to deal with shapes and spaces makes map reading a more exciting venture than was ever intended. But if you are well suited to your chosen pursuit, there is much that can be done to raise your performance above the ordinary:

1. Practice over a long period of time. The old saying “practice makes perfect” has some truth, although it is not complete in itself. Importantly, there is no evidence that either a child or an adult can perform exceptionally well without experience and practice in their field. Myths about child prodigies conveniently leave out the practice and encouragement they were exposed to from a young age: Mozart’s music and the William sisters’ tennis prowess are good examples. Practice is important – you have to have enough experience in your field to be more than competent.
2. Stretch yourself when you practice. Once you are competent, and have spent time practicing, just more practice is not enough – you then have to start deliberate, stretching and intensive practice. You have to move from being competent to being very good or exceptional – and that is where deliberate practice is needed. Practice changes from just doing the activity, to do doing the activity better each time. This requires thinking about what can be improved, trying new approaches and finding out what is successful and what is not. This is more tiring, more difficult and requires much more willpower than practising without thought and attention. It also requires breaking out of old habits learnt during the initial practising stage.
3. Monitor feedback. Be systematic about monitoring your performance, and reflect on what works and what doesn’t. If you can’t or won’t measure it, you can’t improve.
4. Work with someone better than you. Find someone who is better to make suggestions based on your performance. That is why a personal trainer works so well when you are trying to lose weight or get fit. They are able to stretch your practice, based on your performance, whilst monitoring how well you are doing. Working in a team or with a coach also has a positive correlation to improved performance for the same reasons.
5. Benchmark your performance. Being able to compare how well (or badly) you are doing is important. This is why working in a team or with a coach works well. The competitive nature of benchmarking also has a positive correlation to high performance. League tables are a good example of this – for the motivated individual, team, department or organisation, league tables provide clear feedback on progress.

Research into expert performance has shown that improvement is slow but gradual for those that work on their performance in a determined way. Such work is not comfortable or easy, rather it pushes the individual to the edge of what they are capable of, thereby building up new experiences and new capabilities. Search and experimentation lie at the heart of expert performance; constantly pushing the limits on what is possible and what is excellent.

Taking risks can bring rewards

Northern Ballet Theatre demonstrated yet again that taking a risk can bring big benefits. It is not easy balancing the books with ballet these days, yet their production of Dracula demonstrated that daring to be different could leave standing room only in a decent sized theatre.

In what has become something of a trade mark for Northern Ballet, they took a familiar but literary theme, and turned it into a ballet.

Dracula gave opportunity for some great dancing, but it was the story and emotion that carried the audience. And what emotion there was: love, lust, fear, happiness, sorrow as well as worrying madness. The tussle between good and evil takes a bloody turn in the Dracula tale, and Northern Ballet Theatre showed the good and less good in all the major characters. Whilst not exactly true to Bram Stoker’s 19th Century classic, it provided an evening of rich and thought-provoking entertainment.

In a world where the classical and well known ballets are guaranteed to draw an audience it is refreshing that to see something so different, yet so beautifully executed.

During these trying times in business it is worth thinking about standing out of the crowd; providing a product or service that does not follow the well trodden path, but delights customers in a new and different way. Of course such ideas are easier to say than to do. Northern Ballet Theatre celebrates their 40th anniversary this year, as with so many successful organisations they are no overnight sensation. What they are is an organisation that has decided safe might be even more risky than taking risks.

7 Good Ways to Better Planning

The importance of good goals and good planning comes up over and over again in Performance Management. You simply cannot perform well if you don’t know what you should be doing, or why you should be doing it. It sounds so obvious, but somehow day to day stuff often gets in the way.

Here are seven good ways to ensure planning gets done, and gets done to a high standard:

1. Work in a distraction free zone. This is important for any kind of work, but particularly for planning. Some people find classical music helps to really concentrate; personally I like quiet. Planning necessitates ignoring the minutiae and concentrating on what’s really important; what will really make the difference. In order to find those important ideas, you have to give your mind space and time.
2. Work in multiple time horizons. Ensure you have the long term goals and ambitions right, but also ensure you have planned out what you need to do this week, this month, and this quarter to achieve your goals.
3. Work through the pain. Planning is difficult and there is always a temptation to do something easier, or something that will give an immediate payback. Stay with it, feel the uncomfortable feelings of not knowing, and work it through until the plan makes sense.
4. Include numbers. Numbers being dates, estimates, quantities and financials. Unless you can quantify how long something will take, or how much money it will cost or generate, or when it must be done by, it isn’t a plan. It’s an un-thought-through wish list.
5. Collaborate. Plans that have been done with other people are better plans than those done alone. All plans require other people to make them happen, so include them in the planning process. Ensure that those doing the work are able to contribute. Ambitious plans that require everyone to work together need to have everyone’s input right at the start.
6. Finish it. Planning is a valuable tool to refine and improve thinking, but it also makes sure you have a roadmap moving forward. Planning that takes so long that it never gets finished, and never gets used, might as well never have been done. Set a time limit, work hard and well, and get a decent plan together that can be used. You can always refine it later.
7. Enjoy the process. Rather than seeing planning as a drag, enjoy the mind-expanding experience. Planning is a time to see the world as a better place through our actions and our work. What could be more enjoyable than that?

Planning and goal setting is such a fundamental part of achieving anything that it is worth thinking about how to get the environment right to do it better.

What are your top tips to better planning?

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Disregard. Plough your own furrow

We live in a world where communication and teamwork is considered beneficial, which it mostly is. I say mostly because there are occasions when solitary work is important, times when disregarding the outside world is more important than studying it.

There have been times during my career when my betters encouraged total disregard for others’ pricing, marketing activities, or system design. Back then this was confusing – surely more information is better than less information? Well sometimes, but not always.

The rationale is that with too much information we get swamped and are unable to move. Comparisons become stifling and all creativity is gone. Whereas starting with a blank sheet of paper and asking elementary questions can produce startling new revelations.

As I was working on a systems problem yesterday, I did exactly that. I went back to basics and asked “what’s really the problem here?” It produced some interesting, and different answers. The technique is not without its dangers – others could have come up with different or better answers. But maybe that is a great deal less dangerous that coming up with me-too ideas and solutions.

The physicist Richard Feynman went through a period from 1961 to 1967 when he was remarkably unproductive. It seemed as if his genius was used up and he was fresh out of ideas. It took a conversation with James Watson, who together with Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, to awaken his creativity. After having read Watson’s book “The Double Helix” he fretted over it for some time.

His conclusion was scribbled on a notepad, surrounded by jottings and doodles. In the centre of the page Feynman had written “DISREGARD.” He realised that this was what he had been missing; this was why his work had been poor. He realised he had to get curious again, go back to disregarding others’ work and asking his own questions of why things worked as they did.

Reading of Watson & Crick’s discovery enabled him to uncover the reasons for his own lack of productivity.

It is similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ideas encapsulated in his marvellous essay “Self Reliance.” Taking too much note of what others think does not always pay.

I realise now that this is fundamental to my work as a systems analyst –I have to disregard the accepted “truth” that others offer. Because a problem is just that – a difficulty that has yet to be overcome – and disregarding the accepted wisdom is one way of approaching a problem.

"Disregard" and "Plough Your Own Furrow" are useful concepts for many problems, not just physics or designing software.

Floods and power cuts – just another day on the London Underground

I have been in London twice this week and I have been delayed on the underground twice. First it was flooding that closed a bunch of stations (including one I needed to use), and today it was power cuts that closed the Circle line for I don’t know how long. Readers outside the UK won’t recognise the details, but will certainly recognise the frustration this adds to the already arduous task of moving around a capital city.

Thankfully, in the London of 2009, this is a relatively rare occurrence. However, London of 2019 or 2059 might tell a different story. Scientists tell us that we need to prepare for climate change and that climate change is going to mean more extreme weather conditions occurring more frequently. Temperatures will get uncomfortably hot more often - perhaps 70 days in the year instead of the handful we experience at the moment. We will have less rainfall in the summer, and more in the winter.

This is the pioneering work being presented by UKCIP, leading the world in trying to predict what the effect of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will have on our climate. UK Climate Projections 2009 is a brand, spanking new report that uses the best scientific and statistical techniques available to predict what the UK climate will feel like in 10, 20 or 100 years’ time. What I find particularly impressive, however, is that all of the data is being made available, including the assumptions of, for example, how much CO2 we continue to pump skywards.

They have included, for the first time, the full range of confidence levels that can be extracted from the data. This is good news for all those journalists who write for The Sun – plenty of headline grabbing scare mongering to be had for those who go in for such things. But also a wealth of valuable data for professionals who want to make the best of available data to look 50 – 100 years into the future. Which is, coincidentally the life of a building or a railway track for example.

Unless our tube and railway infrastructures are upgraded The Sun’s headline writers will have had it about right – we will be in for summers of misery and winters of cancelled train services.

All this was hosted at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers – perhaps the very people we should be blaming for getting us into this CO2 pickle in the first place. It was engineers who taught us how to use carbon-based fuels with such efficiency. But let’s not quibble – they are making up for it now with some intelligent and thought provoking debates about how to move forward. And we have to face facts – there are not too many of us prepared to give up our washing machines or cars for the sake of the planet.

With a bit of luck, however, and some critical analysis of the data, policy makers will have a better view of what’s in store going forward. Which means I will be much less forgiving when they close underground stations for either “unexpected” floods or power cuts due to a certain type of leaf on the line.

In the meantime I’m resting my tired feet after having trekked half way across London to get home. All that, and it was a hotter day than the weather forecasters had predicted. Ironic, non?

UKCP09 is published by UKCIP and is available to download from

www.ukcip.org.uk.

Fit for purpose

Performance management and business intelligence somehow imply providing something more than the basic product or service that your customer might expect. But this is not so. Performance management is mostly about providing the right environment for an organisation to consistently and efficiently meet the standards expected by its customers.

Performance management initiatives are put in pace so that the organisation can perform its necessary functions to a good standard. In other words, ensuring its product or service is fit for purpose. Not just occasionally, but consistently.

This occurred to me yesterday as I walked through my local train station. And no, my train wasn’t late. I was struck by something much more important than that: safety.

Like many major towns and cities, Reading attracts its share of anti-social behaviour. But there has been a change in recent years – and a welcome one in my view. The local police are a great deal more visible. The presence of the Transport Police, and their uniformed cousins the Policy Community Support Officers, has made Reading Station a calmer and safer place to be. In addition to the coffee shops and boutiques, it has actually made it a rather pleasant place to be.

The crew on duty yesterday as I walked through the station were approachable and friendly. I stopped and chatted to them, and their Sergeant, about their thoughts on keeping the peace. Despite their youthful appearance, they also remembered a time when the station was a tenser and less safe place to be: a few drinks, and a few mates, easily spills over into disruptions that ruin lives both for the perpetrator and the victim. How much better to fund more police officers to calmly restore order and ensure and good night out stays that way?

Behind the calm and confident exterior of those police officers lies an array of performance management building blocks. There is the programme to get more police and PCSOs on our streets, the selection process, training, promotion boards, and on the job mentoring. All monitored and rolled up into government statistics.

This type of policing might be seen as the tip of the iceberg in work that encompasses so much more. Inevitably there is much valuable police work that that is unseen, unreported, and unappreciated. I have no desire to detract from that. I do, however, think that visible policing is a welcome and necessary initiative.

From a performance management viewpoint, it also a lesson that sometimes we need to take an all-round view of a product or service. In this case it isn’t good enough that trains run on time, although that’s always helpful, I also want to travel in a safe and calm environment.

Thank you Transport Police and PCSOs. And what a nice lot you are too!

Beware what you wish for

It is systemically damaging with predictable and harmful side effects. It degrades employee performance and motivates unethical behaviours. It harms interpersonal relationships and corrodes organizational culture.

Are we talking about too much exposure to the Internet? Allowing employees to listen to their iPods all day long? Letting people take too many days sick? Nope, none of those.

We are talking about goals in organisations. The ubiquitous and seemingly benign Key Performance Indicator. Objectives, targets, goals – whatever you call them, we all have them – just some are better managed than others.

Goal setting
Two fascinating papers hit my desk yesterday on the subject of goal setting. Both, in different ways, were saying “beware organisational goals”.

The first by Bazerman et al did not mince its words: “systematically damaging”, “harmful”, “motivates unethical behaviours”. Strong, attention-grabbing stuff.

The second from Bourne and Franco-Santos at Cranfield School of Management was less controversial and more practical. They also looked at HOW to achieve goals and make the point that quality practitioners look at improving processes in order to achieve the required performance improvements.

Both said what we have known for a long time – that goals are often set with too little thought, and without thinking through the possible consequences. Bazerman’s article gives lots of grisly examples of how, under the right management pressure, people will cheat in various ways that would be comical if they weren’t so serious.

Goals are good
In between the doom and gloom of targets, both papers acknowledge the positive side of goal setting. Much research has been done in this area and neither could say that goal setting is a bad thing. It isn’t. It seems to be pretty well universally acknowledged that people like to have something to aim for, and do better when want to be seen to achieve what they set out to do.

The danger comes where goals compete with one another, are ill thought through, and where goals become too narrow, thereby shifting attention away from wider, but still important, issues.

A potential solution
Bourne and Franco-Santos suggest a 10-point checklist for goal setting. Notice how far down the list the task of setting targets is!

1. Review stakeholder expectations
2. Clarify and select strategic objectives
3. Define a success map
4. Prioritise objectives
5. Operational-ise strategic objectives
6. Collect data
7. Analyse data
8. Set targets
9. Design an action plan
10. Discuss and agree an action plan

Creating goals, and managing progress towards them, goes to the very core of business and organisational life. In my experience it normally takes a group of people to “buy into” dubious behaviours that sabotage the good intentions of targets to the degree where organisations can be damaged. In other words, a lot of people need to turn a “blind eye” to let some of the more remarkable stories come to fruition.

Goals that have been properly thought through, and do not set up dilemmas in people’s minds, must be more effective. And this 10-point checklist is both comprehensive and manageable.

References
Ordonez, L.D. , Schweitzer, M.E., Galinsky, A.D., and Bazerman, M.H (2009) – Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting , Harvard Business School

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6114.html

Franco-Santos, M. and Bourne, M. (2008) –The Impact of Performance Targets on Behaviour: A close look at sales force contexts, Cranfield University School of Management

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.