How To Launch Your First Balanced Scorecard, Step By

Step

BY CATHERINE YOCHUM | DEC 15, 2015 |

We met with Rossana Creo, the assistant vice president of strategic planning
at the United Nations Federal Credit Union (UNFCU), as well as Mark Cutler, the
engagement manager at Ascendant Strategy Management Group to discuss how,
with Marks consulting help, UNFCU recently completed a year-long Balanced
Scorecard (BSC) creation and launch. Here are their thoughts on UNFCUs BSC
rollout and the steps any organization can take to complete a successful scorecard
launch.
Step #1: Use your current strategy or create one before you get
started.
RC: When we started this process, we already had our strategy in placewed been
executing on our strategic plan for a year. Our consultant (Mark) helped us create a
strategy map from there, and then we went through with our measures.
MC: Having a strategy already in place probably gave UNFCU a leg up in this
process. The Balanced Scorecard isnt a strategic planits a framework for a
strategic plan. So any organization can use it, whether they have a strategic plan or
not. The scorecard just makes that strategy more manageable.

Step #2: Get buy-in from senior leadership right away.

RC: The initiative to roll out our scorecard at UNFCU was already one of our
strategic initiatives. To get this off the ground, the team assigned to execute it went
in search of experts and found our consultant Mark at Ascendant. When he came on
board, he drafted the first strategy map for us. Our senior management team was
involved right from the start in revising and adopting the strategy map.
MC: One of the key things with any strategy initiative in large organizations is that
you dont want people to feel as though an initiative has been pushed upon them
they should feel as though they are participants in its development. Having buy-in
from the top right away made it easier to get the next tier of leadership involved,
which made it easier for them to explain it to the level of employees beneath them,
and so forth.

Step #3: Form strategic alignment throughout the organization.

RC: Once the executives agreed on the strategy map, they appointed a Measures
Team comprised of the next tier of management who are their direct reports. These
managers eventually had their own departmental scorecards, which created buy-in
along the way and allowed us to train the next layers of management on the scorecard
methodology and process. You can see how it started to cascade down quite
effectively.
One of the main points to understand here is that you can churn out as many strategic
plans or strategy maps as you want, but they will simply sit on a shelf and gather
dust if people dont understand or fully embrace them. Its about getting everyone
involved and making them feel empowered so they can contribute.
MC: This is a really important point that shouldnt be glossed over. Having the
scorecard roll out as a strategic initiative was absolutely critical to UNFCUs
success. A lot of organizations fail at implementing a BSC because nobody is
accountable for it. People get busy and it falls through the cracks. Since UNFCU
made it an initiative, it was one of the things that performance reviews were based
on that year. Thats why it got done! At UNFCU, everyone felt accountable for
making sure it was completed.
Its also all about alignmentwhich is a term we use a lot. We had a goal of getting
every staff member at UNFCU aligned so they could see the strategy. Not only could
they look at the corporate strategy, but they could also look at the 12 departmental
strategy maps we created to see how they were individually making an impact.

Step #4: Ensure that the measures you create add value.
RC: We had to temper our excitement for creating our own fancy composite-type
measures. When we started going through the review meetings for target setting, we
found we didnt have the data we needed, which complicated things. You have to
keep in mind that even though this is a big initiative, its okay to set basic measures
that can evolve into something more meaningful as time progresses.
MC: This makes me think of the quote, Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Many times, people try to craft elaborate measuresbut sometimes its best to keep
it simple. You dont want to overburden everyone on the team so they start thinking
a scorecard will be more work than its worth. In a sense, you have to collect data
and be okay with the 80% solution. As you go on throughout the years and collect
more data, you will be able to determine the best information to collect and youll
become better at the measure-making process. This is exactly what UNFCU did.

Step #5: Dont be afraid to tie in your incentives plan.

RC: Alignment is all about people, culture, structures, processes, measures, and
rewardsand this scorecard rollout has helped us transition to a new incentive plan
to align our measures and rewards system. Weve had the same incentive plan for a
long time, so this is a huge change.
The incentive piece is always a little awkward to talk about, because everyone knows
that equates to a bonus, but a funny thing started to happen as we were implementing.
Even before we were getting ready to go live, things started to change in the
organization to accommodate for the scorecard. For example, we have satisfaction
surveys that we send out to our membership periodicallyand our Marketing
Department redid the survey questions based on our scorecard measures to make it
even more relevant.
MC: Incentivizing around a BSC is something that really helps with buy-in. I told
the UNFCU team from the start that they were being very ambitious with this goal,
but they succeeded and in the end, using incentives was very successful. People paid
attention to the scorecard because its linked to their own personal reward.

Step #6: Focus intensely on comprehensive strategic communication.

RC: Having a full-fledged strategic communication plan around your scorecard
really will help. We have been doing live presentations to the staff, we released a
video, and we have written and released a brochure and a discussion guide around
the scorecard. People tend to resist change, and this is a monster of a changewe
changed the incentives plan and we rolled out a pretty complex initiative that
involves the entire organization. Thus, this type of initiative requires extra special
communication attention.
MC: I cant stress how important this is. Ive been involved in many consulting
projects, and sometimes leadership will change part of the way through the
initiativeit really goes downhill after that. UNFCU has been successful because
they prioritized good communication right from the start.

Step #7: Use software for scorecard management.

RC: This hasnt been an easy task at all. We had hundreds of meetings about the
BSC because of our ambitious approach with our 12 cascading scorecards. We still
have to work hard at keeping them alive, and thats where our Balanced Scorecard
software will help us. Users throughout the organization who have been tasked with
managing the cascading scorecards are using the software now, and we will use it to
make sure reporting is happening and the BSC is working as intended. We plan on
doing refreshes every year and making sure our measures and strategy stay in line.
MC: UNFCUs scorecards have just been rolled out and are going live for the first
time in 2016. Weve spent all of 2015 building them. Part of their success so far is
due to the fact that weve built a scorecard at the corporate level and then cascaded
down from therewe had a repeatable process where we built at the top level, took
it down a level, and so forth. Managing this will be very important, but Im certain
theyll do a great job at it.