Scorecard Best Practices

Advertising Success

An often overlooked method for motivating employees is advertising and celebrating success! The successful completion of an implementation stage or the attainment of an organizational goal is an ideal time to recognize it and to celebrate it. This can be as elaborate as throwing a party, holding an award presentation, or providing a monetary reward; or as simple as a memo to the organization, or an article in the company newsletter.

These “celebrations” can also pique the interest of those that have not yet been part of the process. Success often breeds success and those employees that originally may have had a negative view of the process can often be influenced by an internal story of success. For example, a well recognized, worldwide consulting company announced its scorecard implementation successes in an internal newsletter specifically related to performance measurement and achieving strategy. The newsletter not only advertised the successes of those that had already been part of the roll out, but it also educated the areas of the organization that had not yet been involved and encouraged their future involvement.

Ray Thornton of Gulf States Paper Corporation (one of America's premier forest products companies) states that to be successful at implementing a scorecard system, “Communicate until it hurts!”