Strategy Maps

More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the Balanced Scorecard into action.

Now, using their ongoing research with hundreds of Balanced Scorecard adopters across the globe, the authors have created a powerful new tool-the strategy map"-that enables companies to describe the links between intangible assets and value creation with a clarity and precision never before possible.

Kaplan and Norton argue that the most critical aspect of strategy-implementing it in a way that ensures sustained value creation-depends on managing four key internal processes: operations, customer relationships, innovation, and regulatory and social processes. The authors show how companies can use strategy maps to link those processes to desired outcomes; evaluate, measure, and improve the processes most critical to success; and target investments in human, informational, and organizational capital.

Providing a visual epiphany for executives everywhere who can't figure out why their strategy isn't working, Strategy Maps is a blueprint any organization can follow to align processes, people, and information technology for superior performance.

• Part I: Overview
1. Introduction
2. Strategy Maps
• Part II: Value-Creating Processes
3. Operations Management Processes
4. Customer Management Processes
5. Innovation Processes
6. Regulatory and Social Processes
• Part III: Intangible Assets
7. Aligning Intangible Assets to Enterprise Strategy
8. Human Capital Readiness
9. Information Capital Readiness
10. Organoization Capital Readiness
• Part IV: Building Strategies and Strategy Maps
11. Customizing Your Strategy Map to Your Strategy
12. Planning the Campaign
• Part V: The Case Files
13. Private-Sector Organizations
14. Public-Sector Organizations
15. Nonprofit Organizations

First, I must admit that I am biased, as I like the authors BSC concept. Secondly, even I must admit that I am hard-pressed to find anything in this book that wasn't covered in The Strategy-Focused Organization. Granted, there are more examples, more verbose descriptions, and the concept (in my view) definetely is worth a book of its own, but I would have prefered if it had some more meat in it.

If this is the first time you hear about Strategy Maps, this book is absolutely for you. If you have read The Strategy-Focused Organization, you can skip this one without any remorse, as it doesn't really say anything new.