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Strategic Performance Management - Leveraging and Measuring Your Intangible Value Drivers By Bernard Marr (Published by Butterworth Heinemann £29.99)

 

Robert Craven, author of Kick-Start Your Business and Customer Is King, finds Strategic Performance Management a compelling and informative read with real strategic potential despite the uninspiring title.

 

My body filled with doom and gloom when I was presented with this book – for a start, it wins the title of the ‘Book With The Least Sexy Title’.  Despite my forebodings I was pleasantly surprised.

The 'balanced business scorecard' (BBS) and its associated vocabulary (Key Performance Indicators, strategic intent, business drivers, dashboards, and so forth) have been the bane of many businesses where I have worked. 

Marr’s book is actually a relatively light but succinct explanation of how to introduce the BBS in a sane and sensible manner.  His style is clear and easy to understand.  Chapter introductions let you know what‘s ahead, and a generous use of diagrams, tables and mini case studies breaks up what could have been a heavy read.

As someone who has helped clients to introduce BBS, I was intrigued and delighted that Marr was more concerned with adding value to the business rather than getting hung up on the intellectual detail of what can become a process with no end or context.

Marr does attempt to keep the business school nonsense phrases to a minimum, although it is inevitably littered with business-school speak. But you can forgive Marr the use of slightly alien language when the content and meaning is so rich.

The book is divided into three separate parts: understanding and clarifying the strategic context (in other words, where are we now?), managing performance in an enabled learning environment (making it happen) and automation of strategic performance (using computers).

The last part gives you a valuable checklist to use when considering which computer software to use.  The earlier parts challenge you to understand what it is that you are actually trying to do.  The order of the book hangs together well; it is logical and well ordered.

Marr quite rightly divines that the wrong approach to implementing strategy will often ‘drive dysfunctional behaviour and jeopardise performance’ especially if there is an incomplete picture of the initiative (the strategy trap), the wrong performance measures (the measurement trap) or the incorrect approach to managing performance (the management trap). 

Hooray for Marr! At last someone is writing realistically about this subject – too many consultants see BBS as a licence to print money and don’t see the devastation that a poorly executed initiative will bring.

Marr defines his terms well, clarifying exactly what he means by strategic performance management. He goes on to examine the ‘strategy trap’ and considers market-based and resource-based viewpoints, the ‘measurement trap’ and the ‘management trap’.  His consideration of IT support wraps up the book nicely.

The book takes nothing for granted and emphasises how most strategy is designed with insufficient understanding of how the external and internal environments behave and inter-relate.  Only once you understand that dimension can you accurately map your business model.

Marr points out that any initiative will be doomed unless the in-house team and culture is able to take on board new ways of thinking, learning and doing things. In my experience, this key point is usually glossed over, as most evangelising business teams think they are part of the solution when really they are part of the problem. 

He is keen to focus on the difference between indicators such as guidelines and measures – quoting Einstein: ‘Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted’.  How right he is.  By this point, my initial scepticism was being replaced with an emotion bordering on enthusiasm for this relatively slim book.

Marr clearly sees that, for most larger organisations, automation is ‘the enabler’ and he produces a checklist of how to select the right software.  This was not of particular relevance for me but I do see that his target reader would find this independent review of significant value.

MaKing Sense Of It All

So at last, there is a book that talks sensibly and reasonably about performance management.  Marr’s language gives away his academic background, but see past that and he will give you valuable insights that will assist you to develop a system for your business’s performance measures. 

The book is aimed at senior managers and directors of larger organisations.  But, I think it is suitable for directors of any business trying to put in place a meaningful system for performance measures. Marr’s book is something to be read long before your next strategy meeting, to make sure that you will do the right things and in the right order.

This book will make you reconsider your current approach to strategic thinking and how you attempt to ‘make it happen’. Some of the things this man says will haunt you as you set about your business.  It may be a slim book but it is full of good material and I will recommend it to clients before they start on their next strategy odyssey.

 

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About the author

Robert Craven is a keynote speaker and author of the business best-sellers 'Kick-Start Your Business' and 'Customer Is King'. He has recently been described as 'one of the UK’s leading marketing specialists' and the 'entrepreneurship guru'. He runs The Directors’ Centre, helping growing businesses to grow.
For further information, contact Robert Craven on 01225 851044. (rc@directorscentre.com) www.directorscentre.com

©2006 Robert Craven, Brand Strategy, 2006.

publication details

First published in Brand Strategy, August 2006.