Book Review (sorta): The Balanced Scorecard

So it appears I'm many years late to the KPI, Management Dashboard party. I recently finished reading "The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action" by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. Man, what a slog. I read some pretty boring stuff (at least according to the wife) - e.g. Microsoft Press, Wrox, but this book was a real effort to finish. Not that the book is written poorly, just that the topic and their coverage of it is drawn-out and dry.

I guess the hardest part of reading the book was suppressing the constant "Duh!" that echoed in my head. Perhaps because this book and movement is over ten years old, the mindset is just a background perspective I have been unknowingly immersed in for years, thus taking it all for granted. Yet, the idea, and more importantly - the use of, running a business with a strategy that is widely understood by all employees, highly quantifiable, wider than quarterly financial metrics, and based on causal relationships that are reviewed and modified (including abandoned) still appears to be rare in the business world, IMNHO. I think that most businesses want to believe that they have a company strategy that tracks performance towards corporate goals and engenders a work culture of results=rewards, yet most organizations I've seen appear to be doing little more than speaking to that idea, and mostly making knee-jerk, short-term, reactionary moves generally based on paying the bills month to month.

I have a lot of respect for business owners, and I myself know how nervous I get when my income is erratic, so I can understand the natural tendency to struggle by month to month and not have the time/energy it takes to create and evangelize a Balanced Scorecard type of strategy. Yet this book and many more like it, seem to make a huge case for the efficacy of these more measured, groupwise systems. Hi Ho.