Our Blog

Joining Forces Community Challenge Winners!

Posted April 29, 2012 1:13 PM by Brandon Kline

In a previous post, I briefly discussed my work with the Joining Forces Community Challenge, and the great privilege it was to contribute to an effort in support of our nation's veterans and military families. As a quick recap, the Joining Forces Community Challenge was launched in July 2011 by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Biden in an effort to recognize and celebrate those citizens and organizations with a demonstrated, genuine, and deep desire to be of service and improve the lives of our military families. The Challenge concluded on April 11th, with a celebration at the White House to announce the five winners and one people's choice nomination.

Filed Under Government, Ascendant
more »

Working At Ascendant

Posted April 23, 2012 8:32 AM by Dylan Miyake

We got a little pushback on our job description that we posted last week (see it here). People thought that we were either being too honest (potentially chasing off applications), too blunt (scaring people off in the process), or somehow not being sensitive enough to the needs of potential applicants for our position. I think all of those are true. And intentional.

Filed Under Ascendant
more »

We Need a Great Marketing Manager

Posted April 18, 2012 8:49 AM by Dylan Miyake

Ascendant Strategy Management Group is looking for a marketing manager in the Washington, DC area to support our rapidly growing social enterprise. As a marketing manager with Ascendant, you'll help us expand our presence by overseeing a wide portfolio of branding and marketing activities, including public relations, e-marketing, social media, collateral design and content writing, plus large conferences too.

Filed Under Ascendant
more »

Measuring Uptime – Balanced Scorecard

Posted April 6, 2012 1:34 PM by Ted Jackson

At Ascendant, of course we use a Balanced Scorecard, and we have from day 1. We also hold quarterly strategy review meetings and we update our strategy map and measures each year in an annual review. Our strategy has not changed dramatically each year, but we do tend to tweak our measures on an annual basis. One thing that we have been working on is how to measure our software line of business, ClearPoint Strategy.

Filed Under Balanced Scorecard
more »

Taking Small Steps Toward a More Strategic Budgeting Process

Posted April 5, 2012 10:28 AM by Mark Cutler

Recently, as we were helping a client design and implement their balanced scorecard, they asked us for helping in aligning their budget to their strategy. The thinking was that if they were going to take the time and effort to implement a strategy management system across a large organization, they wanted to ensure they were funding strategic initiatives.

They explained their budget as "cost-plus," meaning that each year the finances are divided up the same way as the previous year, with any additional dollars added on top of that and that no unit's budget varied by more than +/- 5%. In this budget environment and as they were beginning their budget cycle, the client wanted to know what they could do to make their budget process more strategic.

Filed Under Balanced Scorecard
more »