The Balanced Scorecard: Achieving Performance Excellence

Aligning business activities to a company's vision and strategy is a must to ensure operational excellence. This is easier said than done, since this will require specific processes to communicate objectives in a clear manner to all stakeholders, and a robust system to monitor the organization's performance against strategic goals from all perspectives.

The balanced scorecard which was developed by Dr. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and Dr. David Norton ensures the above are met. In this hands-on course, and after presenting the balanced scorecard elements including vision, mission, goals, objectives, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), targets and initiatives, participants will have the chance to build the balanced scorecard for a virtual company using a tested step-by-step model. The knowledge gained from attending this course will ensure that the participants will be able to review or develop the balanced scorecard for their department or organization.

The course uses a mix of interactive and hands-on techniques. Besides brief presentations by consultant and participants, the thrust will be on developing all the elements of the balanced scorecard for a virtual company the trainer will introduce on day one. There will also be many group exercises throughout the five days.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the benefits and importance of a Strategy Focused Organization (SFO)
• Develop a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, vision and mission statements and strategic goals for their organization or department
• Use 'SMART' objectives and key performance indicators to track the performance and productivity at all levels in their organizations
• Apply the approach of best-in-class benchmarking technique to set targets for each KPI
• Design a balanced scorecard based on the Kaplan and Norton model

All managers and supervisors involved in strategic planning and performance management. The course is also very helpful to those involved in improving performance and measuring results.

• Management and leadership
• Strategic planning
• Performance management
• Influencing and communicating for impact
• Innovation
• Analytical thinking
• Entrepreneurship