Did you know that over 50% of Fortune 1,000 companies are now using a Balanced Scorecard approach to measure the performance of their organisation? [1]

Did you also know that 80% of organisations using Balanced Scorecards reported improvements in operating performance and that 66% of these organisations reported an increase in profits? [2]. These same results can be achieved in a consulting practice.

Gone are the days where business owners, consultants and finance managers spend hours each month analysing their performance based solely on financial figures. Those who have implemented a Balanced Scorecard approach understand the importance of measuring the performance of all areas of your organisation including your people, your clients, your systems and processes, processes, marketing and culture.

These same individuals also recognise the link between your performance measures and strategic plan, and how implementing the right measures are critical to ensure you drive the right behaviours within your consulting practice.

But you don’t need to purchase any fancy or expensive software to implement a Balanced Scorecard within your organisation. All you need is a template and leverage the knowledge and expertise of others to create one.

There are many other interesting facts about Balanced Scorecards that will surprise you…

Did you know that according to Balanced Scorecard Collaborative [3]:

  • 95% of typical workforce does not understand its organisations’ strategy
  • 90% of organisations fail to execute their strategies successfully
  • 86% of executive teams spend less than one hour per month discussing strategy
  • 70% of organisations do not link middle management incentives to strategy
  • 60% of organisations do not link strategy to budgeting

 

I find these facts staggering. Think about this for a minute.

In your practice do only 5% of your employees really understand your strategy and the direction of your organisation?

Are you on track to achieve the targets within your strategic plan?

Do you review and discuss your strategy at least once per month?

Are your incentives for your management team linked to measures within your strategic plan?

Is your budgeting aligned with your strategic plan?

Do you team understand what the focus of the consulting practice needs to be in the next month or quarter?

If the answer to No to any of these questions then is your consulting practice really optimising its performance? If your measures aren’t aligned to your targets or your strategic plan – how do you expect to improve?

Balanced Scorecards are a great way to visually track the performance of your consulting practice. Our Balanced Scorecard is as simple as 9 different graphs that track all areas of our consulting practice. Our key areas of focus are highlighted and assessed by a simple traffic light; red, yellow and green system, so that our entire team can clearly see the areas we need to focus on. We revise our Balanced Scorecard at the end of each month and have it printed and attached to our office wall, alongside our strategic plan.  It is communicated to staff with a focus on key actions we need to implement to return to positive indicators across our consulting practice

There is no excuse or reason for our team to not be familiar with the performance of our business. It also provides clarity and focus around priorities and high value vs. low value activities that are going to achieve outcomes for our consulting practice.

According to a 2014 Global State of Strategy and Leadership Survey Report by Palladium [4] a Balanced Scorecard is used by

  • 55% of high performers, and
  • 7% of low performers.

 

I would like my organisation to continue to be one of these high performing organisations and I have no doubt that our Balanced Scorecard has contributed to this.

When you start to analyse the research, it really is no surprise that the Balanced Scorecard has also been selected by the editors of Harvard Business Review as one of the most influential business ideas of the past 75 years.

If you would like to learn how you can simply and effectively implement a Balanced Scorecard within your organisation reach out to our team at enquiries@brsresults.com.

 

 

[1] http://www.bain.com/
[2] Balanced Scorecard Forum
[3] http://www.thepalladiumgroup.com/pages/welcome.aspx
[4] “2014 Global State of Strategy and Leadership Survey Report”, http://www.thepalladiumgroup.com/Pages/dlRegister.aspx?ddid=2583, Palladium Group, Inc.