Balanced Scorecard

Balanced Scorecard is a strategic planning approach that describes companies goals in four perspectives - "Customer", "Business Process", "Financial" perspective and "Learning and Growth" perspective. Balanced Scorecard can use mind mapping software to support creation of scorecard for personal or business needs.

Overview - Balanced Scorecard using Mind Pad

Designing Balanced Scorecard using Mind Mapping Software

Balanced Scorecard is a conception (not method) that allows to represent company's goals. For designing Balanced Scorecard it's reasonable to apply a mind mapping or concept mapping information representation approaches.

Normally mind (or concept) map deals with topics. In Mind Pad we used so called Frames. Think about frame as an object with special properties set.

Use special model for representing Balanced Scorecard information. It allows creating topics with properties: "Goal", "Measure method", "Action", "Action Feedback" and others. Click to see all properties of "Goal" object.

In Mind Pad it's easy to link some strategic goal with a person card. It looks great and simplify the information about related person. Read more about person map.

Use special color styles designed for Balanced Scorecard building. It's an easy way to make your map looks professionally. Click to see big balanced scorecard map.

Using Balanced Scorecard with Mind Pad

Now, let me show how to benefit from using BSC Goal object in Mind Pad.

I've add to the map a custom designed BSC Goal object. It has all properties I need to describe some specific company goal for perspective. My goal is "Improve access to business-critical information".
First, I wish to describe the measurement method. I put into "Measure method" property the following text: "We will evaluate the number of requests by one employee"
Now, I'm describing my goal: "The number of employees that can access strategic information", the goal value is "80%".
It's a time to act. I put in "Action" property the value "We will start promoting company entire network".

I built this goal of my balanced scorecard map. And after some time I'm getting back to it as I have some results:

First, now I know what is the problem, why most people wasn't able to access business-critical information. My IT stuff reported that "We should provide a direct access to company network from the web". Let's put this into "Action feedback" properties.
Also, guys from IT did some work to improve access to business information. I evaluate the progress as 10% and put some ideas in "Progress Description" property: "Guys from IT released a wireless access to entire network".

So this example shows how you can manage your goals with Balanced Scorecard map. It's easy because topics represent just the short summary and if you need details - you click at topic and browse for more values.

Click to see big image of contact map

Also, you can view the old version of Balanced Scorecard built with Mind Pad. It doesn't use object-oriented frames approach so the map is biggest and harder to understand. Compare it with new one to learn the benefits of frames approach.

Why we work with Balanced Scorecard

Balanced Scorecard is what makes company more effective as company employees know about strategic goals, know how their job is linked with strategic goal. In 2004 we have designed a Strategy2Act product that allows to build and balance scorecard.

Now we are releasing Balanced Scorecard in mind mapping technique. We used Mind Pad product to describe the sample mind map and show how to create a company/personal balanced scorecard.

What is Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is a business management concept. This concept allows to transform strategy into action. It's a not a set of rules or methods, it's a conception that allows to share your strategy and vision with others.

You can put information about goal description, measure way, current and target state.

Learning and Growth perspective (strategic goal) in Mind Pad. Pay attention to properties of this frame objects. Note: you can put information about goal description, measure way, current and target state.

There are three important things you should know about Balanced Scorecard:

· It’s a concept (not a set of rules, tools or methods);

· It helps to connect your strategy with real action;

· It lets to describe companies’ strategy, vision and mission;

Basing Balanced Scorecard concept every strategic goal must have a success factors. For every factor you can have a measure way and target value.

You should show the progress for this goal. "Progress Description" and "Progress" properties were designed for this task.

Goal. As you can see at this picture Employee Satisfaction goal is linked with Learning and Growth strategic goal. You should show the progress for this goal. "Progress Description" and "Progress" properties were designed for this task.

The balanced scorecard suggests to view the organization from four perspectives:

The Learning and Growth Perspective
The Business Process Perspective
The Customer Perspective
The Financial Perspective

Then you should develop success measure ways and assign a target values.

Why use Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is another great way to let your employees know about your strategy, mission and vision. People will not just “know” about your strategy, but will be able to answer question:

What can we do to achieve our strategy;
What is the relation between things we are doing now and strategy/vision of our company;
The Balanced Scorecard transforms strategy into action;