Articles and Videos
For More Information
Strategic Planning in Education: A Simple Guide for Leaders and Administrators
This whitepaper shares a simple guide that will help leaders and administrators improve the strategic focus of their teams so the planning efforts result in real, measurable, and definable outcomes.
Techniques for Strategic Thinking and Planning
This webinar will explore the techniques for Strategic Thinking and Planning and how incorporating these techniques into the strategy will create an organization that is future ready.
Creating Strategic Alignment
This webinar will focus on strategic alignment and how it helps create an organization that is high-performing, agile, and growth-oriented.
Improving Strategic Performance with BSC and KPIs
This webinar will help you orient yourself with the latest thinking in strategy formulation, performance measurement, and strategy execution.
What is your “Strategic Management Maturity?”
This webinar will explain the various dimensions of strategic management and why they are important to your organization. You will also learn how to use that information to correct gaps in your strategic management performance.
Using Dashboards to Bring Strategy to Life
This webinar discusses how to effectively use dashboarding software as part of a performance management review meeting cadence.
Balanced Scorecard for Government
This informative webinar will focus on how to develop and use the balanced scorecard in mission driven organizations, including federal agencies, ministries, state and local government, and nonprofits.
The Art and Science of Strategy Execution
This webinar discusses the five strategy execution imperatives, challenges and issues standing in the way of successful strategy implementation, and actions you can take to become a more strategy-focused organization.
How to Plan for a Disruption Like THIS?!
This webinar takes the planning stages of our Nine Steps methodology (Steps 1-6) and re-frames them in the context of planning a response to a major disruption.
Strategic Project Management: Bridging The Gap Between Strategy And Project Management
This webinar discusses how to maximize the alignment between strategy and project management and shows better ways to align your projects to strategy and contribute to your organization’s mission, vision, and strategy discussions.
Balanced Scorecard: What It Is and Why So Many Organizations Have One
This webinar shows the benefits of improved strategic planning and strategy execution using a Balanced Scorecard and how the system can be used to improve organization performance.
Strategy Essentials for Project Managers
This webinar highlights the benefits of linking strategy and project management and discusses what strategy is and why it is important, how strategy and project management can be aligned to improve an organization’s results, and how project managers can benefit from knowing more about strategy.
Using OKRs With Balanced Scorecard
This whitepaper will help you better understand OKRs (objectives and key results), the benefits and pitfalls of OKRs and how to use OKRs with the balanced scorecard.
Build Your Organization’s Strategic Project Management Capability
This webinar explores strategic project management and how aligning your project management efforts with strategy can help your organization achieve its strategic goals.
Top 5 Secrets to Build Strategy Alignment
This webinar reveals the top 5 secrets that can help your organization become strategically aligned.
9 Things We Wish We Had Known About KPIs
This recorded webinar shares 9 things the presenters wish they had understood about KPIs from the very beginning, instead of learning them thru mistakes, hard experience, and untangling KPI messes at numerous clients.
Is There Any Strategy in Your Company’s Strategic Plan?
By Howard Rohm
This article discusses how a company can organize the strategic thinking and planning process and shares a few techniques to help you start a strategy focused journey.
What Makes Strategic Planning “Strategic?”
By Tim Johnson
Given that most organizations today perform some level of strategic planning, the real question becomes, “How do we put the strategy back into strategic planning?” This paper discusses 5 steps to take during a strategic planning effort.
Strategic Management for State and Local Government
By Howard Rohm
Find out how agencies can improve performance and service with a modern strategic management approach in this Q&A.
A Peek Behind the Curtain: How Do Successful Companies Innovate?
Featured in Texas CEO magazine. Reposted with Permission.
By Gail Stout Perry
The topic of innovation can be daunting, filled with vague terminology and mysterious processes. How does an organization innovate? How does one create a culture of innovation & guard against or create disruptive innovation?
KPI Best Practices
This recorded webinar will provide the knowledge and insight to better understand the relationship between strategy and KPI’s.
The Road To ERM: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Implement Enterprise Risk Management.
Originally Appeared in Public Risk, by the Public Risk Management Association. Reposted with Permission.
By Elizabeth Cooper
The balanced scorecard provides a structure that may help public risk managers travel down the path to ERM with fewer bumps and maybe just a little bit faster.
It’s All Connected: From Innovation to Mission/Vision
Presented by Gail Stout Perry
Learn how municipal governments are using a single solution to not only successfully deal with seemingly disconnected top issues, priorities and concerns, but to also achieve award -winning results.
Developing Future Strategy
This webinar explores the components of a successful forward-thinking strategy and how these will be the basis for every strategy going forward.
Measuring Strategy Execution
This webinar will provide the knowledge and insight to understand how KPIs can help drive organizational results and aid decision-making.
Align the Organization: People, Purpose & Performance
By Howard Rohm & David Jalili
True alignment occurs when an organization’s strategy is turned into action at the business and support unit level, and then into action at the employee level for individual employees and teams of employees.
What is Your Strategic Management Maturity?
This webinar explores the various dimensions of strategic management and why they’re important and how you can use that information to correct gaps in your dimensions.
A Kite with a Broken String – The Balanced Scorecard
By Gary Cokins
How do executives expect to realize their strategic objectives if all they look at is financial results? Any strategic measurement system that fails to start with a strategy map and/or reports measures in isolation is like a kite without a string. There is no controlling.
Using Dashboards to Bring Strategy Execution to Life
This webinar explores how to effectively use dashboarding software as part of a performance management review meeting cadence.
Customer Value Proposition –The Basis of an Organization’s Strategy
By Peter Ndaa
A common challenge for organizations is knowing when and how to shift the emphasis of their value proposition at different stages of their product or industry life cycles.
Strategic Themes – How Are They Used and WHY?
By Gail Stout Perry
Strategic Themes are essential elements that form the foundation for a balanced scorecard. However, once the scorecard is built, the fundamental role they play is not always clear to the naked eye.
Strategy + Innovation
This webinar discusses how to improve strategy execution with innovation, and how to improve the strategic innovation process.
Themes of Confusion
By David Wilsey
Many practitioners find it difficult to teach their employees what a strategic theme is. Read this article to see how gorillas and Phil Collins can help.
Build Innovation Into Your Strategy
By Dan Montgomery & Gail Stout Perry
Innovation can include both paradigm-busting breakthroughs and incremental improvements in existing products or services. See how an organization can articulate, align, and communicate how innovation fits into its overall strategy.
Evaluation of a BSC System and its Implementation
We are often approached by organizations that have implemented a balanced scorecard system but are not achieving the results they desire. Once your scorecard is built and implemented, how do you ensure its ongoing health and effectiveness?
How to Measure Innovation
By Mark Malinoski & Gail Stout Perry
This article addresses how to measure difficult concepts such as innovation.
The Ultimate Balanced Scorecard Sports Metaphor
By David Wilsey
So exactly how is the balanced scorecard like Joe Montana throwing to Dwight Clark to win the Super Bowl?
Linking Sustainability to Corporate Strategy
By Howard Rohm and Dan Montgomery
A balanced scorecard system aligned with principles of the “Triple Bottom Line” offers a way to accomplish social and environmental goals while integrating them with financial performance and competitive advantage.
Evidence of a Mature Scorecard: The Power of Alignment!
By Gail Stout Perry
While talking to a reservationlist whose job it is to answer phones and book local flights, it was suddenly clear that this person was clearly attuned to the big-picture strategy and performance of not only her organization, but of her government.
Shift Your Scorecard System into High Gear for Strategy Execution
In this webinar, you will learn tips & techniques (as well as traps to avoid) to strategically align your entire organization. The webinar will also include recommendations for monitoring and evaluating the degree of strategic alignment across your organization.
The Strategic Management Maturity Model™
Many of our clients ask a similar question: where do we stand compared with other high performing organizations in terms of strategy management? Answer: use the SMMM to assess your performance!
KPIs: What They Are and Why Your Organization Needs Them
Learn how mastering KPIs might be the secret to your organization’s success.
Strategy-Based Balanced Scorecards for Technology Companies
By Howard Rohm & Mark Malinoski
The Balanced Scorecard as a Technology Company’s Strategic Planning and Management System.
Measuring Strategy Execution
This webinar will provide the knowledge and insight to understand how KPIs can help drive organizational results and aid decision-making.
Any Strategy in Your Strategic Plan?
By Howard Rohm
Is your strategic plan devoid of strategy?
A Balancing Act
By Howard Rohm
A seminal article about how to implement a Balanced Scorecard.
Sustaining New Directions
By Howard Rohm & Larry Halbach
A sequel to a Balancing Act about how to implement and sustain a balanced scorecard.
The Top 8 Strategic Management Horror Stories and How to Avoid Them
This informative webinar feature a countdown of the top 8 reasons scorecards fail. This free webinar is based on true, bone-chilling stories and will include a discussion of root causes as well as methods for preventing or overcoming similar challenges in your own organization.
Using the Balanced Scorecard to Align Your Organization
By Howard Rohm
Balanced scorecards, when developed as strategic planning and management systems, can help align an organization behind a shared vision of success.
Improve Your Performance “News”
By David Wilsey
Thanks to social media and breaking news email alerts, employees know that a vague acquaintance ate corn flakes for breakfast and the stock market crashed 5 minutes ago, but have no idea how their organization is performing towards its strategic goals.
Strategic Project Initiatives and Management
This webinar will share tips & techniques (as well as traps to avoid) to effectively execute on your balanced scorecard strategic projects.
Scorecard Driving Strategy at Veolia Water North America
With a new CEO and ambitious revenue goals, Veolia NA first successfully implemented a balanced scorecard and then integrated the scorecard deeper into its organization using an e-learning tool.
Award for Excellence: AMEDD Finds Direction
The Army Surgeon General and Commander of the US Army Medical Command champion used the balanced scorecard as “the principal tool by which they improve operational and fiscal effectiveness and better meet the needs of patients and stakeholders.”
Success Story: NMDP Turning Vision into Action
The strategic planning effort at the National Marrow Donor Program®/Be the Match®, dubbed Vision into Action, has driven creative thinking around how to improve efficiencies and cost effectiveness and get people thinking about how they could double transplant volumes within five years!
Read More Read the Entire Case Study >>
View the NMDP Strategy Map >> View the NMDP Department Strategy Map >>
Award for Excellence – Mecklenburg County North Carolina
The County’s focus on citizens has successfully transformed the county government and positioned it for a tough times!
Make Performance Improvement Strategic
By Howard Rohm
Have you ever wondered if your performance improvement interventions are aligned with corporate strategy?
Improving Government Performance
By Howard Rohm
Do your government leaders have a clear strategy? Is that strategy communicated with clarity? Do you have a disciplined way of prioritizing between competing programs and services under tighter and more stringent budgets?
Putting Out Fires (Literally) with a Balanced Scorecard
The Northwest Fire District (AZ) needed to re-create its strategic plan and decided to use the Institute’s Nine-Steps™ framework in an effort ensure the plan was reflective of the needs of its stakeholders.
What is a Balanced Scorecard?
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system used to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organizational performance against strategic goals.
What Should You STOP Doing?
By Gregg Fellows
With the economy still in “transition,” many executives are cautiously thinking about strategies to recover, recapture and rebuild. But are those re-ignited initiatives the right investments today? What should you be doing? Or, just as important – what should you stop doing?
What Should Your Company Measure Besides Financial Results?
By Will Kaydos
Most people don’t recognize that performance measurement lies at the heart of the improvements we humans have made in our standard of living in the past few centuries.
The Deming Cycle
By Paul Arveson
W. Edwards Deming in the 1950’s proposed that business processes should be analyzed and measured to identify sources of variations that cause products to deviate from customer requirements.
A Process Improvement Archive
Compiled by Paul Arveson
Ever wondered what Affinity Diagraming, Cause-and-Effect Diagrams, Pareto Charts and Flowcharts are all about?
Survey Development Primer
Compiled by Paul Arveson
Many times balanced scorecard measures depends on data collected by surveys. This article includes excerpts from authorities on survey design and survey methods, providing some of the basic principles used to develop a survey for supporting the balanced scorecard.
Four Lessons in Strategy from the Game of Chess
Four lessons on how chess can improve strategy execution.
Common Risks and Challenges Impacting Strategy Execution
This blog discusses common problems encountered with strategy execution, each with typical causes and potential solutions.
Achieving High-Performance Through a Continuous Improvement Mindset
A culture of continuous improvement (CI) is not easy to attain, but once in place, results in an organization that is steadily improving its performance over time.
The Role of Middle Managers in Strategic Thinking and Implementation
The need for middle managers to be explicitly involved and accountable for strategic thinking and implementation is an ongoing trend with no end in sight.
OKR, KPI and BSC: What is the Difference?
Even seasoned measurement practitioners have a hard time differentiating between Objectives and Key Results (OKR), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Balanced Scorecard (BSC).
The Case for Strategy Certifications
Why would you NOT want the people in charge of charting the course for your organization’s future success be trained with a strategy certification?
When in a Blue Ocean: Beware of the Sharks
Three essential elements to consider when a Blue Ocean becomes a Red Ocean.
Does Your Team Have the Skills Needed for Successful Strategy Execution?
The success of the organization is dependent upon the human capital element of your organizational capacity.
The One Thing We Forgot to Communicate in Our Strategic Plan Rollout
One thing leaders tend to forget to communicate during the strategy rollout can impact the execution of the strategic plan.
Higher Education Strategy Considerations
Effective strategic planning is vital to success in today’s fiercely competitive and dynamic environment of Higher Education institutions.