Strategy Maps - Balanced Scorecard

What are Strategy Maps?

What are the pros and cons of the BSC approach?

A Strategy Map is a diagram showing the causal relationships between strategic objectives according to the four perspectives (financial and customer perspectives, internal process, learning and growth).
Strategy Maps are the cornerstones of the framework of the Balanced Scorecard project. They are the focal point of the system.
They help "materializing" the passage from the expression of the strategy to the creation of value itself.
The establishment of Strategy Maps requires an in-depth work more than substantial.
The quality of the management system is directly dependent on the adequacy and reasonableness of Strategy Maps.

According to the authors, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Strategy Maps are an indispensable tool to:

• Clarify the strategy and facilitate the communication of the said strategy to each employee
• Identify the key processes of successful strategic implementation
• "Align" human, technological and organizational investments in order to work in the direction of the strategy
• Highlight the differences of implementation of the strategy, and thus facilitate the correction

Recommendations

• It is strongly recommended that the Strategy Map be held in a single page.
• Let's recall that the financial perspective is not necessarily expressed in the same unit of time than other components of performance. It is a more long-term loop and, in fact, the result of the three other perspectives.
• The success of strategic goals is directly dependent on men, culture and management, in short on the organizational quality. Remember that the success of strategic objectives is also strongly linked to the fluidity of information (IS).
• Even if the Strategy Map is a tool for expressing concrete strategy, it is also an instrument of information within the organization.

Strategy Maps book

Strategy Maps
Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes
Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton
Harvard Business School Press
The third volume of the Balanced Scorecard methodology
devoted to Strategy Maps

Additional resources

Balanced Scorecard Dossier BSC Approach BSC Principle

Balanced Scorecard Project Comments on Strategy Maps BSC Reference Books

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