Having Trouble with Your Strategy? Then Map It (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition) by Robert S. Kaplan

Description

This is an enhanced edition of HBR article R00509, originally published in September/October 2000. HBR OnPoint articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. If you were a military general on the march, you'd want your troops to have plenty of maps–detailed information about the mission they were on, the roads they would travel, the campaigns they would undertake, and the weapons at their disposal. The same holds true in business: a workforce needs clear and detailed information to execute a business strategy successfully. Authors Robert Kaplan and David Norton, cocreators of the balanced scorecard, have adapted that seminal tool to create strategy maps. Strategy maps let an organization describe and illustrate–in clear and general language–its objectives, initiatives, targets markets, performance measures, and the links between all the pieces of its strategy. Using Mobil North American Marketing and Refining Company as an example, Kaplan and Norton walk through the creation of a strategy map and its four distinct regions–financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth–which correspond to the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard. The authors show how the Mobil division used the map to transform itself from a centrally controlled manufacturer of commodity products to a decentralized, customer-driven organization.