Many organizations use Balanced Scorecards as a method of leading strategic goals. However, too many organizations use PowerPoint or Slides to track their most important goals.
Sadly, this results in most important data being hidden inside a presentation, with no source of truth, no live updates, and no real idea on whether the organization made any progress towards realizing those goals at any given moment.
Waymaker has the solution to this lack of clarity.
How to create a scorecard in 5 simple steps
Creating scorecards for tracking these strategic goals in Waymaker is very simple. Waymaker turns dormant balanced scorecards into dynamic strategic goals.
There is no code required and any leader can create a live scorecard to track actual vs forecast in only 5 easy steps.
After logging in to Waymaker, follow these steps.
- Go to dashboards, scorecards.
- Hit ‘+’ to create a new scorecard.
- Enter the name of the scorecard and add team members whom you want to have access.
- Select the outcomes you want to add to your scorecard from the team members goals. Remember, the outcomes will need to have Waypoints for showing actual vs forecast.
- Hit save. You’ve just created your first scorecard.
The process of identifying, setting, and creating goals for a balanced scorecard is a much deeper process – something Waymaker can simplify too. Read about Waymaker’s Leadership Curve.
If you want to learn about what Balanced Scorecards are, read on.
What are balanced scorecards?
A balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management process that is used to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communication, and monitor organizational performance against strategic goals.
It is called a “balanced” scorecard because it measures an organization’s performance using a balanced set of metrics, including financial measures and non-financial measures.
Some common examples of metrics that might be used in a balanced scorecard include:
Financial measures
These might include metrics such as revenue, profitability, and return on investment.
Customer measures
These might include metrics such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention.
Internal business process measures
These might include metrics such as quality, efficiency, and innovation.
Learning and growth measures
These might include metrics such as employee training, employee retention, and employee satisfaction.
By using a balanced set of metrics, organizations can get a more complete picture of their performance and identify areas where they need to improve.
If you’d like a deeper diagnostic on how to identify business improvement, try our business diagnostic which takes a holistic review of a business across more than 250 datapoints in vision & purpose, market focus, strategic growth, business model practices, sales, marketing, service, and employee experience.
In 5 to 15 minutes, you’ll have identified the most valuable areas for improvement within your organization.
Where did the idea of Balanced Scorecards come from?
The concept of the balanced scorecard was first developed by two professors, Robert Kaplan, and David Norton, in the 1990s.
They published an article in the Harvard Business Review in 1992 that introduced the idea of using a balanced set of metrics to measure organizational performance.
The balanced scorecard approach was designed to address the limitations of traditional financial measures, which often fail to capture the full range of factors that contribute to an organization’s success.
Since its introduction, the balanced scorecard has become a widely used management tool, with many organizations adopting it to align their activities with their strategic goals and objectives.
Today, the balanced scorecard is used by organizations in a variety of industries and sectors, including for-profit businesses, non-profit organizations, and government agencies.
Why would an organization use scorecards?
There are several reasons why an organization will use scorecards.
Alignment with strategic goals
By using a balanced set of metrics, an organization can ensure that its activities are aligned with its strategic goals. This can help the organization stay focused on what is most important and avoid distractions that might take it off course.
Improved communication
A scorecard can help improve communication within the organization by providing a common language and set of metrics that can be used to discuss performance. It can also improve external communication by providing stakeholders with a clear and concise way to understand the organization’s performance.
Better decision-making
By tracking the right of metrics, an organization can get the right picture of its performance, which can inform better decision-making.
Improved performance
By setting specific outcomes for the goals in its balanced scorecard, an organization can work to improve its performance in the right areas. This can help the organization achieve its strategic goals and objectives more efficiently and effectively.
Enhanced accountability
A scorecard can help hold individuals and teams within the organization accountable for their performance by setting clear targets and measuring progress against those targets.
But this doesn’t sound very agile, in fact it sounds rather corporate….?!?
That’s true. However, many larger organizations are introducing OKRs, which is an agile goal setting methodology, to create more agility and short-term focus.
How are balanced scorecards different from OKRs?
Balanced scorecards and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) are both strategic planning and management processes that are used to align an organization’s activities with its goals and objectives.
However, there are some key differences between the two approaches.
Focus
Balanced scorecards tend to focus on a broad range of metrics, including financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth metrics. OKRs, on the other hand, are typically focused on a small number of high-level objectives, with specific key results used to measure progress towards those objectives.
Time horizon
Balanced scorecards are typically used to measure performance over a longer time horizon, such as a year or more. OKRs are typically set for a shorter time, such as a quarter, or year and are designed to be ambitious and stretch the organization’s capabilities.
Level of detail
Balanced scorecards tend to be more detailed, with specific targets and metrics for each area of the organization. OKRs are typically more high-level, with a smaller number of objectives that are cascaded down through the organization.
Implementation
Balanced scorecards are often implemented top-down, with senior management setting the goals and metrics for the organization. OKRs are typically implemented bottom-up, with individual teams and employees setting their own objectives and key results that contribute to the overall goals of the organization.
How does using Waymaker simplify balanced scorecards and OKRs?
Waymaker users can bring the best of both systems into one seamless, strategic, and agile system of leadership.
In Waymaker, goals are the building blocks of any plan. Goals can be short-term or long-term. They can be detailed or simple. And, they can be from any area of the organization.
In addition, Waymaker’s diagnostic tools help leaders identify which areas of the business that if improved created the greatest amount of value.
If you’re using our business diagnostic to help set goals, then it is going to enable a holistic approach by looking at the health and maturity of an organization’s vision, market, strategy, business model, sales, marketing, service, and employee experience.
Therefore, if your goals are aligned to these insights, they’re the most valuable activities you can do.
Waymaker’s Scorecards can be created for any team or level of the organization. Most importantly, scorecards are built from metrics within the outcomes of goals that team members are working on.
This means, the most important metrics that your organization wants to hit are ALWAYS connected directly to the humans who are responsible and accountable for leading the change.
This is what a goal centered leadership culture looks like.
Waymaker is leadership software that helps leaders set the most valuable goals, aligning teams to the most valuable work, and visually see progress to success in real-time using dashboards and scorecards.
In summary
Waymaker empowers leaders to move from reactive chaos into strategic agility by.
- Using goals to align, stretch, and organize the most important metrics and KPIs.
- Keeping the same language of performance in C-Suite and the frontline, enabling a consistency of leadership and clarity in communication.
- Enables leaders to think and plan long term but adapt strategically in the short term.
- Consider the whole of the organization using data driven diagnostic tools to find business improvement opportunities every quarter.
- Provide a real time view on where the organization is going (board level balanced scorecard goals) and who is doing what to get there.
If you want to know more, book a demo with our team here: https://waymaker.io/discovery.
Or, you can learn about setting goals that win in this free eBook.
