Scorecard Best Practices

Updating Scorecards

As an organization's business needs and situation change, it becomes necessary to update the scorecard system's strategy, objectives, measures, and initiatives. Changes in organizational structure will require the scorecard system to update measures, objectives, and initiatives to reflect new responsibilities. It is important, therefore, to have a well‐thought‐out process for making necessary changes to the scorecard system.

In general, organizations are declaring good levels of success in this regard. When asked whether their organization had well‐thought‐out criteria for adding and removing measures from their scorecards, approximately 70 percent of Adopters agreed to some extent, while 87 percent of the Best Practice group agreed. Results from the SHAPs study indicate a high correlation between organizations declaring well‐thought‐out criteria for adding and removing measures and those asserting significant benefits from their scorecard systems.

While many organizations are in the initial stages of implementation and have not needed to remove measures from their scorecards, they still need to have a process in place to periodically assess the need to update their scorecards. Having an effective process in place for updating scorecards involves more than just specifying criteria for adding and removing measures. Processes must also include the ability to add, remove, and change objectives, initiatives, targets, accountability, as well as to reorganize hierarchies ...