Scorecard Best Practices

Have Buy‐In From Top Level Management

To provide a supportive environment for moving strategy forward, the organization must have buy‐in from the top‐level management. Management buy‐in will also likely increase acceptance of the scorecard system by other employees. Financial support and human resources will likely be diverted to the scorecard initiative only if top‐level management is convinced of its benefit. If top management is not convinced, how can they convince others in the organization? One respondent to the SHAPs study confirms: “It is much easier to allocate human and capital resources and share these resources across the organization now that everyone actually sees how this (scorecard system) positively impacts the organization as a whole.”

Political battles are avoided or minimized when top‐level management sponsors the initiative from the onset, and publicizes its benefits and importance to the rest of the organization.

Fortunately, the impetus for scorecard system initiatives often comes from top executives and the board level (see SHAPs study results in Exhibit 4.2 ).

Exhibit 4.2: Impetus for the Scorecard System

Top‐level management buy‐in is important to the success of a scorecard system. However, it is not instant insurance that the initiative will be immune from failure or termination. Sometimes, a change in top management can mean “pet projects” of the outgoing ...