Ten years ago, the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) had low and declining student achievement, demoralized teachers, crumbling buildings, high turnover among superintendents (average tenure of two years) and disaffected parents pulling their children out of the system. More than 60 percent of the city's high school students missed at least two weeks of school per year, and the district had more than 700 teaching vacancies. The system was failing its students and stakeholders. Fast forward 10 years, and Atlanta has reversed its dismal numbers.

This post continues my thinking on running a successful Balanced Scorecard strategy review meeting. Remember, this review meeting happens quarterly and is focused on strategic issues and not operational information. To set the table for this review, we need to quickly define several roles. In smaller organizations, some of these roles may be filled by the same individual. The first role is that of the executive team. This is the Executive Director or CEO and his or her direct reports. This group is typically 5-12 people who are responsible for executive the strategy, so they are the ones that make the strategic decisions. These are the active people in the meeting.

On January 15th we will be releasing the newest features of ClearPoint Strategy, the performance management software. We are calling this release Winter '10 (since it is 2010 and winter time). You can learn about the new features in detail at the ClearPoint website. I thought I would highlight a few of them in this post.

Ascendant Strategy Management Group is looking for a associate consultant in the Washington, DC area to support our rapidly growing public sector practice. As an associate consultant (entry-level) with Ascendant, you'll get a chance to participate actively on client engagements, help out with creating new products and services, and help us define and grow the company.