What makes a good Balanced Scorecard report? I have written in this blog many times about the need to have regular reporting and how to prepare for the report, but I continually get the question about what is a good one or bad one? Let me quickly state that a good report is one that provides useful information to the leadership team of an organization so that they can discuss and make decisions about their strategy. Well, if you know anything about Ascendant and the Balanced Scorecard, you have probably read or heard that answer before. This blog attempts to provide a few more details.

Context - A Balanced Scorecard Report should be the document/guide/agenda for a monthly or quarterly review of the strategy by an organization. The organization can be at the executive level or at a business unit level. Just make sure that the scorecard being reviewed is at the same level as the leadership team. We have seen many organizations report by theme or just report part of their strategy on a monthly basis while reviewing the entire strategy on a quarterly basis. Theme reporting is a post for another day.

The Report - The report itself should be the document that is reviewed during the meeting. It can and should be sent out in advance to the leadership team in order to prepare for the meeting. I would recommend that the report be generated from a Balanced Scorecard software tool to help you manage version control, but however you do it, it is essential that it can be printed or put into a distributable format like PDF or PowerPoint. In over 10 years of helping organizations with their review meetings, I have found that most executives will not proactively go to a place to review a document prior to a meeting. It is much more effective to send them a document (via paper or email).

The report should start with an agenda, and the agenda should be built around the strategy map. Some organizations thrive on theme reporting, and I think these are really effective. By theme reporting, I mean following a common set of objectives through the perspectives. Other organizations will have reviews based on a particular perspective (customers, employees, finances, etc).

Key Content Elements - For the report, you should stay at the objective level. Try having 1-3 pages about each objective. You can show measure charts and related initiatives, but they should be shown within the context of the objective. Also be sure to have the owner listed next to the objective. This is the person that should drive the discussion, and it is a great way to prompt the leadership team when both preparing and conducting the strategy review meeting. The other requirement is to have qualitative analysis. Most organizations start with a simple description of their progress on each objective, but you want to migrate to an identification of key issues or drivers that need to be addressed. If you can get this information into the report ahead of the meeting, you can have a much more effective meeting when you are all in the room together.

Appendix - In your first few meetings, you may want to have an appendix as a separate report. This appendix could have all of the measure details (formulas, source, data analyst, etc) as well as the initiative details. The appendix will provide a comfort factor during the first few meetings. Ultimately you can keep that appendix in your Balanced Scorecard software and can reference it during the meeting if necessary. It will save you a few trees.

In Summary, your report should be organized around the strategy map or some elements within the map. You should try to stay at the objective level and clearly identify the owner of each objective. Analysis should be alongside your data summary areas and you should have enough information to have an informed discussion. The report will evolve over time, but this is a good model to have in mind as you get started.