Strategy focused management

Strategy mapping and strategy scorecarding turn out to be more and more indispensable for strategic deciders. In 1992, Kaplan and Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard [1], a performance measurement and management system linking cause and effect between four strategic perspectives. In 2001, both authors remark [2], that the Balanced Scorecard in the early 1990s was developed to solve a performance measurement problem, whereas measuring strategies become now the essential benefit of their methodology. Despite the charming effect of visualizing strategic themes and objectives by strategy maps we found that strategic decision makers have three major questions: (1) How can we get mission, vision, strategic objectives and core competences into one comprehensive visualized strategic frame-work? (2) How do we derive high-level strategic themes and objectives without defining strategic dreams? (3) From where do we get appropriate and hands-on to generate indicators for measuring strategies? To clarify these key questions and enhance the acceptance of strategy mapping we present an ‘Extended Strategy Map (xMap)’ in this article. In contrast to typical strategy maps the ‘xMap’ contains mission, vision, strategic objectives and core competences in one frame, thus giving deciders a tool to view their strategic architecture at a glance and review actions during the day-to-day running of their business. Our extended strategy map, and the scorecard derived from it, can be regarded as a hands-on strategic architecture [3] which deciders take as a strategic tool, e. g. by fixing it as a large standard paper print in their offices. The strategy map embedded in our xMap is success factor based by strategic themes derived from success factor analysis. Success factor based approaches have been found in [4] for driving success or in [5] for managing risks by strategy maps. In our article the development process of the xMap is shown together with it’s application to cluster management in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region.