HOW EXCITING THE WORLD OF STRATEGIC PLANNING & MANAGEMENT CAN BE

Trivia question: Which was the more strategically successful Super 14 professional rugby franchise over the course of the 2000s;
the Blue Bulls or the Crusaders?

So your organisation in this metaphor is like a professional rugby team and you are using a balanced scorecard strategic planning
and management system to create and manage your organisational “play book.” It is critical that everyone on your team
understands and can align with your organisational mission, vision and strategy because as owner or “coach,” you cannot play the
game for the “players.” Those players make their own decisions and take actions on behalf of your team. If you and your team fail
to articulate clearly a coherent strategy or communicate that strategy throughout the organisation, it is likely that the team will not
play in a coherent manner that is consistent with that vision and strategy.

The manner in which you communicate your strategy with your team is with something called a strategy map. Strategy maps are
communication tools used to tell a story of how an organisation creates value. They show a logical, step-by-step connection
between strategic objectives in the form of a cause-and-effect chain laid out over four perspectives, from bottom to top:
Organisational Capacity, Internal Process, Customer, and Financial.

In the Organisational Capacity perspective on your organisation’s strategy map, you will find objectives and initiatives related to
finding the “right players with the right skills to support the game winning strategy” that you want to execute.

The Internal Process perspective is your “game playing” perspective. When your organisation is developing or delivering products
or services, it is working on the quality or effectiveness of its “blocking, tackling, running and throwing” needed to “win games.”

The objectives in your organisation’s Customer perspective would focus on the experience of your “fans” as well as their
metaphorical attendance rates.

The Financial perspective focuses on the cost of your “player” salaries and other expenses and various forms of revenue.
Ultimately, you would measure the success of your “franchise” with profitability just like most other businesses.

So what is the moral of this balanced scorecard sports metaphor? Sometimes an organisation can find itself financially
successful in the short run despite areas of concern in a long-term strategic sense. Or to put it more bluntly, you can sometimes
make money for a while even though you have a terrible team. The balance in balanced scorecard means that organisations have
to build capacity, win games, please fans and make money all at the same time. When an organisation only views its strategic
success through financial lenses, one can come away with a very inaccurate impression of how well the organisation is truly
performing.

Perhaps this metaphor has helped demonstrate one of the principles of how any organisation can benefit from a more balanced
view of its strategic success.