Strategy Review Meetings Require Smart Preparation and Reports
As challenging as it may be, building and cascading a Balanced Scorecard isn’t necessarily the hardest part about implementing a BSC program. Many organizations stumble over the mechanics of using the BSC—specifically, over performance reporting. Why? Because they treat the BSC like another metrics project. To succeed with the scorecard, organizations must establish regular strategy review meetings that take BSC reporting out of the operational realm and elevate it to its proper strategic place. And the right reporting system can make all the difference.
Learn more about how to more efficiently manage strategy review meetings by downloading our SRM Best Practices White Paper.
Frequent reporting and strategy meetings are often tedious, but are always a necessary evil.
Frequent reporting and strategy meetings may seem cumbersome and unnecessary. Perhaps you’re having an unusually busy quarter, or maybe you want to get home to dinner sooner and simply do not want to sit through another meeting. However, despite the extra time and effort required by strategy reviews, these meetings are crucial to achieve strategic success. A disciplined approach to strategy execution can jumpstart an organization’s ability to reach and exceed its visions and goals.
Organizations should hold brief reporting meetings at the end of the first and second month of each quarter, focusing on key initiatives and poor performing areas. Business strategy is a continual process; by using brief reporting meetings to review performance indicators and track progress in reaching their targets, teams can adapt their actions to better serve their needs, and even create an innovation strategy. But what if your company only collects measures quarterly? That’s okay! Even if you don’t have all of your data at hand during each reporting meeting, just work with what you have. If measures are collected quarterly, but you report monthly, simply provide some qualitative insights and analysis. Just be sure to mention that your analysis is based off of incomplete data/trends.
"The senior management team needs to have regular, probably monthly, meetings that focus only on strategy."
-Dr. Robert Kaplan
Similarly, full strategy review meetings (SRM) should occur immediately at the close of each quarter. SRMs provide a high level overview of the organization’s strategy, follow up on previous action items and focus on problem areas that need to be addressed. SRMs have the unique ability to spur continual learning and growth in an organization’s strategy; they create a continuous dialogue between teams and cross-functional groups, thereby enabling collaborative problem solving. Additionally, SRMs reinforce the executive leadership’s commitment to the change process, both mobilizing change throughout the teams and motivating each individual to align their goals to the organization’s larger vision. In other words, strategy becomes everyone’s job.
However, while these are the best practices for SRM frequency, you may have to adjust based on your organization and schedules, as mentioned in our previous post.
Frequent reporting and strategy meetings are often tedious, but are always a necessary evil.
Holding frequent meetings seems like a lot of work. And that’s because it is in fact a lot of work, especially if you’re collecting and analyzing all of your data manually. The number one reason why Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel fail those who attempt to manage their Balanced Scorecard (BSC) program in it is because it's a cumbersome process with minimal automation. If you are like many organizations with data sitting on various databases, you can configure many applications to automatically pull the data right into your Balanced Scorecard software and performance management software. You'll still need to include performance analysis, but the data feeds should reduce your ongoing reporting time commitment, expediting the process.
Many organizations which have been successful in making strategy execution a core competency have turned to the ESM to support their strategy management meetings. The ESM is designed to enable interactive strategy review sessions driven by a focused management report. By putting the right information at your fingertips, static performance data is transformed into actionable knowledge, enabling real-time decisions that drive results.
Every successful Balanced Scorecard program that I've seen thus far has had a champion who wasn’t afraid to put in extra work to ensure the program takes root. Effective strategy execution leadership may be as simple as rallying the leadership team to show up to the strategy review meetings and mobilize change. This kind of upfront reporting effort will inevitably pay off with handsome dividends in the years that follow.
