Thomas Friedman, in an op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week asked the question: Why are we focusing on the teachers? Shouldn't we also be asking the parents to step up and take responsibility for their students? And, of course, the answer is yes, parents should take greater responsibility for their child's behavior. But, I'm afraid that the article misses the point.

Boston, MA (PRWEB) November 15, 2011

A ClearPoint Strategy user, Citi Performing Arts Center, has been inducted into the Palladium Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy. The induction took place on Wednesday, November 9, at a formal ceremony in San Diego, CA.

Today is the last day to get the early bird registration discount for the upcoming summit in March of 2012. This summit is going to be great. We have keynote presentations from David Norton, co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard, and Daniel Pink, author of DRIVE. If you want to register today to receive the early bird rate, but you cannot get your act together to do it online, please email us, and we can invoice your organization.

I heard some disconcerting news last week from the field of education. According to a report by the National Association of Gifted Children (NAGC), most states lack the critical infrastructure necessary to ably identify and teach our high-ability and high-potential students.

The Wall Street Journal in a Nov. 12 article framed the story by stating that "[a] national focus on the lowest-achieving students has helped boost their academic performance, but it has left the country's brightest young minds behind, prompting calls to rethink how schools teach top kids."

Regardless of your position on America's wars, past or present, I think we would all agree that our Veterans deserve a day to be honored. They have served our country, protecting the everyday freedoms of folks like you and me. I'm not writing this post to highlight any issues, positive or negative, surrounding our Veterans, but simply to show my support and say thank you.

Peel back almost any case study of a failed organization, and you'll see, more than anything else, an example of a failure of alignment. Alignment, at its simplest, is the entire organization working towards a common goal. It seems so simple, but in practice is really difficult to achieve. Why is this? Is it just some perverse quirk of human nature? Or can alignment happen?

Given that we work in the mission-driven sector (governments, education, associations, and nonprofits), I receive a lot of questions about the Balanced Scorecard in this area. How can a for-profit concept apply in the nonprofit space? Does the Balanced Scorecard support nonprofits? Isn't this a management framework that puts financials at the top of the strategy map? Little do people know that even in the 1996 book on the Balanced Scorecard by Drs. Norton and Kaplan, there is a section on nonprofit organizations.

Of course, nonprofits need to modify the strategy map to meet their needs, just like government agencies do. Neither of these organizations is in business to make money, so the financial perspective cannot be at the top of the strategy map.

This weekend someone emailed me a copy of an article from Time magazine about how local communities are not letting the dysfunction of Washington, DC politics stop them from making progress. I live in Washington, DC, so sometimes it is hard to see beyond CSPAN and the news in the Washington Post. It seems like politics have brought the USA to a standstill, where a supermajority is now required for any basic vote in congress. I've been lucky enough over the past year to have two clients in the same region represent this "Pragmatic Caucus" that was described by Bruce Katz and Judith Rodin.

We use Yelp.com to find great restaurants, Amazon.com to find quality products, and Consumer Reports.org to find everything from from the latest gadgets to the fastest sports cars.

Doesn't everyone want to know if they are getting a good deal? Don't we all want to know if we will love the result or regret it before spending any money? In the information age, everyone is looking online for this kind of insider-information before making a purchase.

In a very similar way, donors are going online before making a decision about who they support. And it's in your best interest to know what they are seeing to ensure that your hard-earned donations do not disappear.

Good news for fans of strategy management! The watchdog group Charity Navigator has expanded its rating system beyond financials to now include governance and openness about operations. This first step in a long term effort to expand their rating system is a great first step. Transparency of operations is always a good thing and may go a long way to preventing ethical violations that harm the entire non-profit sector. But there is more nonprofits can do - use disciplined strategy management and program assessments.