Managers who see it as a ‘quick fix’ will be disappointed – the balanced scorecard needs to be planned carefully, used wisely and developed as part of a larger sea change in your organizational strategy.

The balanced scorecard and goal-setting a large part of a balanced scorecard – which is explained more fully elsewhere on this website – comes from setting goals and targets. At a top level, these will apply for the organization as a whole, but lower down a manager will set his people goals and targets that support those of the organization.

One problem with traditional target setting as opposed to the balanced scorecard is that people work to them at the expense of other things. Salespeople focusing solely on their sales figures may improve your bottom line, of course, but if it means a fall in customer service standards, or ignores their personal development, then it could lead to a long-term decline in the business’s performance.

Setting goals and targets across a balanced scorecard avoids this problem because it reduces the reliance on one single performance measure. While a manager may keep a sales target as a key performance indicator, including other targets across a basket of measures – thinking about the customer’s perspective, the internal business process perspective and the innovation and learning perspective.

Before you implement the balanced scorecard to be successful, you need to fully prepare your business for the balanced scorecard and vice versa. You’ll need to decide, with senior managers and other stakeholders, what your organization’s goals and targets are. You’ll need to do a lot of analysis and consideration – and then do the same for the processes that will be needed to support it.

You’ll then need to communicate the processes, and their rationale, to your people. The better you have prepared your processes and the more you have thought out your balanced scorecard approach, the easier this will be. But for the change to be successful it will need the cooperation of your entire team.

Moving forward with a balanced scorecard finally, it cannot be emphasized enough that a balanced scorecard approach needs to be continually worked on. If it is introduced and then forgotten it will have no effect. The measurement of goals and targets needs to be continuous, as does the development the scorecard shows is needed.

Using visual aids like the dashboard and the ‘traffic light’ systems can give your people a clear focus of where they are doing well in their jobs and where they need to develop. It can be a hugely successful motivational tool, as well as one that supports the success of your organization – even if it is hard work.

Balanced scorecards at the Advanced Performance Institute Fortunately, you do not need to do all the hard work involved in balanced scorecards alone. The Advanced Performance Institute is a world-leading independent research and advisory organization specializing in organizational performance. The institute provides expert knowledge, research, consulting and training on concepts like balanced scorecards, performance measurement and corporate performance management.

The aim of the API is to provide today’s performance-focused companies, governments and not-for-profit organizations with insight, advice and services that help them deliver lasting change and superior performance.