Creating a Balanced Performance Scorecard

Creating a Balanced Performance Scorecard

I work with a lot of Boards of Directors for public agencies, corporations, nonprofits. Typically, my focus is on helping these Board develop a high-level performance scorecard that the Board can rely on for measuring the organization’s performance. This, in turn, will accelerate the organization to attain higher levels of performance.

The important thing about the performance scorecard is that it has to be balanced. It has to balance all the aspects of what is essential to the organization’s success – from financial sustainability to customer satisfaction, from product reliability to ethical integrity.

The organization’s core values are the things that, if the organization could speak for itself, it would say are most important to it. Each of them can be measured. A balanced scorecard will look at 8-10 different categories of core values and assign metrics and targets to each of them. A tool on our website called Developing Core Values explains this in detail.

An unbalanced scorecard, in contrast, will have too many metrics. They won’t be focused on outcomes, but rather on outputs. Too many of them will fall into one category, like financial. Other core values, like integrity or environmental stewardship, may be neglected.

A Balanced Scorecard Tied to Core Values

This is an example of a balanced performance scorecard tied to an organization’s core values. As the matrix illustrates, each core value has at least one performance measure.

LRI helps develop meaningful performance measures tied to your organization’s goals to help you drive continuous improvement: https://leading-resources.com/consulting/performancemanagement/

Eric Douglas

Eric Douglas is the senior partner and founder of Leading Resources Inc., a consulting firm that focuses on developing high-performing organizations. For more than 20 years, Eric has successfully helped a wide array of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporations achieve breakthroughs in performance. His new book The Leadership Equation helps leaders achieve strategic clarity, manage change effectively, and build a leadership culture.

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