Strategy Maps

Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes

By: Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton

Narrated by: Walter Dixon

More than 20 years ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton introduced the balanced scorecard, a revolutionary performance measurement system that allowed organizations to quantify intangible assets such as people, information, and customer relationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplan and Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthrough performance with a management system that put the balanced scorecard into action.

Now, using their ongoing research with hundreds of balanced scorecard adopters across the globe, the authors have created a powerful new tool - the "strategy map" - that enables companies to describe the links between intangible assets and value creation with a clarity and precision never before possible. Kaplan and Norton argue that the most critical aspect of strategy - implementing it in a way that ensures sustained value creation-depends on managing four key internal processes: operations, customer relationships, innovation, and regulatory and social processes. 

The authors show how companies can use strategy maps to link those processes to desired outcomes; evaluate, measure, and improve the processes most critical to success; and target investments in human, informational, and organizational capital.

©2004 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation (P)2020 Gildan Media

Written like a textbook

I found it difficult to follow. I didn't like how it was worded. Instead of saying things simply and straight to the point, they used academic lengthy words, that sound good. That in combination with the readers monotone voice, was not good for me.