Executing Strategy with the Balanced Scorecard

Abstract

In order for organizations to succeed, it is important that managers establish clearly defined overall goals, core values, a vision of the future, and also develop a workable strategy to achieve these things. But simply having a good strategy in place does not guarantee that it will be successfully executed. The balanced scorecard, developed by Harvard professor Robert Kaplan and consultant David Norton, can help business leaders manage their businesses and help them achieve full execution of their strategies through the use of objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives. Instead of focusing solely on financial objectives, the balanced scorecard is an integrated set of performance measures organized around four distinct perspectives – financial, customer, internal, and innovation and learning. This paper explores business overall goals and mission, core values, vision, and strategy. Then the focus shifts to strategy execution through the use of the balanced scorecard.