One of the most famous management books in recent history is The Balanced Scorecard, published in 1996 by two Harvard Business School professors, Robert Kaplan and David Norton. If you’ve never heard of it, you should at the very least become familiar with its core precepts, which can be roughly summarized as recognizing that purely financial measures of performance are inadequate and that a multidimensional analysis is required to effectively evaluate your firm’s organizational effectiveness.
There are basically four sections to the "balanced scorecard:" articulating your firm’s strategy; communicating that strategy and linking it to relatively objective measures which clearly reflect your progress (or lack thereof) towards achieving the strategy; setting targets for individuals to inspire them to reach higher on those measures; and finally enhancing feedback and learning.
Now Kaplan and Norton are back with their fifth book as coauthors, The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage. If you think this is a franchise they’re milking, all I would say is give them a moment’s credit for inventing the franchise–after which I agree with you utterly.
But in the land of business literature, where the average half-life of a concept can be measured in terms of one or at most two quarterly earnings releases, the "balanced scorecard" has legitimate legs, and so it’s worth seeing what new they have to say.
As implied by the title, the new book takes leadership in crafting a credible, distinctive, and powerful strategic vision as almost a given (or at least as a prerequisite): "There are two key issues. First is leadership. Without strong visionary leadership, no strategy will be executed effectively." That’s about all they have to say on the topic. The rest of the discussion focuses on how to actually imbue operations with the strategic vision or, in other words, how to get it done:
The normal course of events is for companies to focus on day-to-day operations and short-term problem solving. Management meetings focus on fighting fires and fixing problems. Often little time and few resources get committed to strategic issues.
We don’t advocate abandoning an intense focus on operations and their improvement. But we do advocate planning strategy, not just describing it as important. The senior management team needs to have regular, probably monthly, meetings that focus only on strategy.
To emphasize the importance of marrying strategy to execution, they offer this quote perhaps apocryphally attributed to Sun Tzu: "Strategy without tactics is the long road to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
What’s wrong with being strong on tactical execution? Obviously, nothing per se. In corporate America, tactics are often addressed through initiatives such as Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, and other "continuous improvement" and business process re-engineering efforts. All well and good. But they are typically pursued without regard to whether the processes that are being optimized are actually things the company should be doing. As the authors put it, "quality and process improvement programs are like teaching people how to fish. Strategy maps and scorecards teach people where to fish."
Here’s a simplistic example from law firm land: A "zero-based budgeting" examination of your office space requirements–for partners, for associates, for staff, for the library, for conference rooms, etc.–might yield incremental improvements in how you allocate those expensive downtown Class AA building square feet. But they will not address the question of whether all the activities you perform in that premium space need to be performed there.
A stronger example might be in how you pursue development of your lawyers’ client relations skills. If you are sufficiently progressive as to have a dedicated client relations or client focus program, good for you. But does it discriminate in favor of your best clients or is it scattershot across the board? Even more strategically, are the clients (and prospective clients) it focuses on informed by the types of work the firm aspires to get and the industries and practice areas you want to emphasize going forward? Not all dollars of revenue are created equal.
Don’t assume a focus on strategy happens automatically.
Indeed, the authors recommend monthly meetings explicitly focused on strategy:
"[M]ost management meetings get consumed with discussions about short-term operational and tactical issues. It is important to meet to discuss and solve operational problems. But companies err when they devote all their time together for fire-fighting and coping with near-term issues. The formal strategy execution system schedules strategy review meetings at a different time from operational review meetings. In that way, each meeting has its own frequency, agenda, information system, and participation, as best meets the goals for that meeting."
Beyond monthly meetings, they recommend creation of what they call (they are business school professors, alas) an "Office of Strategy Management." Stop rolling your eyes and stay with me.
Think of the "OSM" as the managing partner’s or executive committee’s "chief of staff:" Not the person who sets the strategy, but the person who tries to ensure that (a) the right meetings are held (b) attended by the right people (c) with appropriate follow-up and follow-through.
Essentially, the OSM is responsible for making sure that nothing important falls between the stools, and that you have the right stools in the right places. Finally, they can reach out to less central but still important functions such as finance, recruiting, marketing, and IT, to make sure those departments’ activities are closely aligned with the firm’s espoused strategy.
Is your leadership team, then, delegating responsibility for day to day oversight of strategy execution? Not on your life:
"[E]executive leadership pervades every stage of the management system. Throughout The Execution Premium, we describe organizations that have successfully implemented their strategies. They operate in varied regions and industries … Their strategies differ … About the only common element all these diverse successful strategy implementers have in common is exceptional and visionary leadership. In every example, the unit’s CEO led the case for change and understood the importance of communicating the vision and strategy to every employee. Without such strong leadership at the top, even the comprehensive management system we introduce in this book cannot deliver breakthrough performance.
"In fact, leadership is so important to the strategy management system that we make a rather bold claim that leadership is both necessary and sufficient for successful strategy execution. The necessary condition comes from our experience with the more than one hundred enterprises around the world who have become members of the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame. In every instance, the CEO of the organizational unit implementing the new strategy management system led the processes to develop the strategy and oversee its implementation. No organization reporting success with the strategy management system had an unengaged or passive leader."
At every stage, then, senior leadership is doing exactly what it’s being paid to do: Leading.
You:
- set the ambitious agenda and "stretch" goals;
- explain and relentlessly communicate how each professional will have to adapt their behavior to pursue those goals;
- modify the firm’s organizational units as need be to suit them to pursuing the goals;
- run the on-going strategy review meetings and determine what mid-course corrections are called for; and finally
- allow the strategy to be challenged as circumstances change, performance is evaluated, and professionals respond more and less favorably to the new mandates.
In many ways, the Holy Grail of leadership is to identify and articulate a compelling strategy tightly suited to the firm’s capabilities and market opportunities, and then to assure that everyone starts rowing strongly in that direction.
The fact that it’s relatively easy to state makes it no less daunting to achieve. How hard is it to state "I want to lose weight." "I want to stop smoking." "I want to get more exercise."
Or, "I want to align everyone in the firm with our carefully crafted and potent strategy."
Good luck. Seriously.
