Mindmapping Eats Balanced Scorecard for Lunch

Have you seen one of these Balanced Scorecard bubble charts?  If its like the one I’ve been seeing lately it looks like an example from “top ten things never to do with PowerPoint.”  The late Steve Jobs would hate it…but I digress.  The real problem with them is that they just become another mind-numbing chart.  Some companies even put them up on the wall like Successories’ motivational posters.  While displaying such things certainly communicates what your “big rocks” are, it does little to align the “IBE”s - those Itty Bitty Executions that happen daily to make your company run.    Try taking those big rocks and arraying them as first tier on a mind map.  (Prioritize them for goodness sake.) Then the next time you have a staff meeting, start with Big Rock #1 and discuss what each of your departments/divisions, etc is doing to support or achieve new initiatives associated with it.  Doing this instead of the silo approach whereby you flash your Balanced Scorecard on PPT then proceed to be briefed by functional unit.  There is no way you can “see” how your disparate functional activities are aligned and contributing to your big rocks.  Letting the mind map guide your way may also reveal duplications of effort.  Don’t’ be surprised to hear a “Hey – I didn’t know you guys were doing  that too.”  You may also find opportunities to better allocate resources.  For example, you may discover that Big Rock #3 is suffering and that the efforts on Big Rock #2 or #10 are overkill – reallocate those resources to get BR#3 on track.  Try this approach for your next meetings – it may be a little uncomfortable at first – change often is, but I think you’ll find it a better way to manage your business.

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