Books on Balanced Scorecard

I was planning to read and refresh my memory on Balanced scorecard for a while now. This weekend, while looking at many books, I was quite confused which one to buy. Here are a few helpful hints I picked from Amazon.

Kaplan and Norton co-authored an article which was published in the Harvard Business Review (January/February 1992). In it they introduce an exciting new concept: the balanced scorecard. They have since published four books:
(1). The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action (1996)
(2). The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment (2000).
(3). Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes (2004)
(4). Alignment: How to Apply the Balanced Scorecard to Corporate Strategy (2006)

In The Balanced Scorecard, as Kaplan and Norton explain in their Preface, "the Balanced Scorecard evolved from an improved measurement system to an improved management system." The distinction is critically important to understanding this book. Senior executives in various companies have used the Balanced Scorecard as the central organizing framework for important managerial processes such as individual and team goal setting, compensation, resource allocation, budgeting and planning, and strategic feedback and learning. When writing this book, it was the authors' hope that the observations they share would help more executives to launch and implement Balanced Scorecard programs in their organizations.

Then in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton observed five common principles of a Strategy-Focused Organization:
1. Translate the strategy to operational terms
2. Align the organization to the strategy
3. Make strategy everyone's job
4. Make strategy a continual process
5. Mobilize change through executive leadership

The first four principles focus on the the Balanced Scorecard tool, framework, and supporting resources; the importance of the fifth principle is self-evident. "With a Balanced Scorecard that tells the story of the strategy, we now have a reliable foundation for the design of a management system to create Strategy-Focused Organizations."

What we have in Strategy Maps are two separate but related components: Further development and refinement of core concepts introduced in the earlier two books, and, a rigorous examination of new ideas and new applications by which to convert intangible assets into tangible outcomes. In the Introduction, Kaplan and Norton explain that their direct involvement with more than 300 organizations provided them with an extensive database of strategies, strategy maps, and balanced scorecards. This abundance of material has revealed a number of strategies and tactics by which literally any organization (regardless of size or nature) can create and then increase value. The strategies and tactics are embraced within three targeted approaches for aligning intangible assets to strategy:
1. Strategic job families that align human capital to the strategic themes
2. The strategic IT portfolio that aligns information capital to the strategic themes
3. An organization change agenda that integrates and aligns organizational capital for continued learning and improvement in the strategic themes."

What we have in this Alignment is a brilliant analysis of how to use the Balanced Scorecard to create corporate synergies. As they observe in the Preface, they have identified five key principles "for aligning an organization's management and measurement systems to strategy":
1. Mobilize change through executive leadership.
2. Translate strategy into operational terms.
3. Align the organization to the strategy.
4. Motivate to make strategy everyone's job.
5. Govern to make strategy a continual process.

Further reads?
f you're interested in Balanced Scorecard, you could read a very capable book by the Swedes Olve et al (2003) - "Making Scorecards Actionable: Balancing Strategy and Control" - that even includes some thinking on why balanced scorecards go wrong - and what to do about it. Paul Niven (2005) does the same in his "Balanced scorecard diagnostics".

If you have any reviews or recommendations, do drop a comment.