Phew! Another first week of March has come and gone and so has Ascendant’s 2013 Mission-Driven Management Summit—our 5^th annual conference on strategy and performance management for mission-driven organizations.

While we like to think the summit is a success every year, I believe this year we had a fantastic conference at the National Press Club and even managed to put it on in the face of the Snowquester—the early March snowstorm than never really materialized in Washington, DC.

Even though we had to cut it a bit short because some speakers couldn’t make it into DC and we wanted to be sure that everyone would be able to make it out OK, we still had some incredible keynote presentations. Dr. David Norton, co-creator of the Balanced Scorecard, shared his data that demonstrate that mission-driven organizations who manage their strategy achieve breakthrough results similar to the for-profit organizations that do.

Pedro Alba, chief of strategy and operations for the World Bank’s Latin America and Caribbean Region, told the story of how his region of the Bank has implemented the Balanced Scorecard over the past 12+ months, cascading it from the Regional Management Team down to the 12 country (geographic) and sector (functional) units.  While there measures are a work in progress, they have already begun reporting and cataloging common challenges and standout successes.

Of course, Eduardo Carrera of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Puerto Rico gave—what’s becoming a tradition—his emotionally moving and thought provoking presentation on how his organization handles strategy.

And, as usual, Ascendant ran our BSC clinics that enable us to engage with Summit delegates to help them work through the issues they are struggling with as they execute their strategies.  These range from developing their strategy maps and measures to getting leadership buy-in to the most effective ways to run strategy review meetings.

All in all, I would say, “Mission: Accomplished!”