Four Keys to Accelerating Your Results

What's a strategy without a plan for achieving it? Moreover, what good is a plan without a system for periodically measuring its progress?

1. Ensure Focus is on the Correct Data
   From the earliest phase of strategy execution, access to, and presentation of, the right data at the right time is essential. By using a hierarchy of cascaded strategic objectives as mileposts for selecting the right measures, individuals can direct their attention and efforts toward improving performance areas that directly impact the strategy.
   
   With clear and constant focus on the critical few measures, employees can predict performance more effectively and become empowered to act. Focus enables large organizations to be nimble.
   
   
2. Deploy Deep & Wide to Ensure Alignment
   Most strategies fail because of poor deployment. The individuals most critical to an objective’s achievement might not recognize how important they are. With a clear line of sight from the strategy to each individual, and between horizontally-aligned functions and business units, organizations can provide a thorough strategic focus to enable actions that drive results.
   
   
3. Develop a Culture of Accountability
   By instilling and fostering accountability, organizations create systems in which every employee’s actions are strategically linked to drive results. Improvement efforts become targeted at areas where results are most important. Those making the improvements can directly see the impact on organizational performance.
   
   
4. Leverage Scorecards through Reviews
   The single best way to drive results from a Balanced Scorecard framework is through regular, analytical reviews. Executives and managers should use Scorecards to pinpoint areas of underperformance, then dig in to determine if the true root cause has been identified and what, if any, corrective action is underway (this will likely require following the problem down to a lower-level, cascaded Scorecard and linked, causal measure).
   

Reviews are the mechanical levers that ensure improvements are made. Reviews drive execution of strategy and achievement of results.

Learn more about:

• Cascading Scorecards
• Developing Performance Improvement Skills
• Conducting Scorecard Business Reviews