The Institute Way Blog
How Can They All Be Our Customers?
Twenty-three people were waiting for the workshop to begin. The job at hand was to facilitate key managers, analysts, and program advisors through a strategic thinking process and formulate a new strategy. The organization was a four-hundred employee...
The Post-Retreat Strategic Planning Letdown
On the radio the other day there was mountain climber that shared her experience standing atop Mount Everest. She said that while standing on that summit she was surprised to find that rather than revel in her achievement and enjoy the view that so...
PS: Our Balanced Scorecard Saved The U.S. Army $26 Million
I was working with an Army command at Ft. Sam Houston this week and had invited a special guest - Scott Hencshel - to address the group regarding the organizational challenges of implementing a balanced scorecard system within Army. (Scott’s command is...
Navigating with the Fuel Indicator
Has it ever dawned on you that you think you are headed in the right direction only to discover that you are using the wrong measure to inform your decisions? It feels a bit like navigating a truck using the fuel gauge instead of the GPS. It was a lesson that I...
Bringing Innovation Down to Earth
Years ago, I worked for a Big 5 consulting firm and did a lot of strategic planning projects. In one case I remember we facilitated four three-day workshops with the top 25 executives in a government-owned power generation company in Canada. We went through a pretty...
Balanced Scorecard Gone Bad – What’s that Funky Smell?
I had a distressing phone conversation earlier this week. A former client called to say they were at a decision-point. They were trying to decide if they wanted to keep using their balanced scorecard system or not. He went on to say, “to be quite honest,...