The Most Focused Nonprofits Keep Their Strategies Simple

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The Most Focused Nonprofits Keep Their Strategies Simple

A few weeks ago, I taught an introductory Balanced Scorecard (BSC) course to a group of individuals from small nonprofits at Washington, DC’s, Center for Nonprofit Advancement.  As part of the class, I walk through a case study of a nonprofit that successfully implemented the BSC and I stop along the way and give participants exercises to work on so they get a feel for developing a strategy map and scorecard.

Well, I had just gone over the strategy map and asked the students to take some time to develop their own “quick and dirty” strategy map.  The idea was to get them thinking about the limited number of strategic objectives for their organizations over the next three to five years.  

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3 Ways the BSC Helps You Better Manage Your Organization's Strategy

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3 Ways the BSC Helps You Better Manage Your Organization's Strategy

Implementing the BSC isn’t just about determining your strategic objectives, figuring out what measures you are going to use to track your progress, and the implementing the initiatives aligned to those objectives. 

It is about implementing the theory of your organization—the hypothesis implied by the investments you make to create or improve desired capabilities so that you can deliver results to your clients or customers.  Along the way, you have to continually tweak the theory, making course corrections as you move forward based on what you’ve learned and what you believe will occur. 

Three significant ways in which the BSC can help you better manage your organization’s strategy are:

  1. Enabling data-based decision making
  2. Setting and enforcing accountability
  3. Structuring regular strategic discussions

 

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