Should you weight your scorecard intents?
Weighting your scorecard focus areas. You read about it, but is it imporant for your company?
In some cases, where a detailed corporate or CEO performance framework is in place, this often makes a lot of sense. The first question you need to ask is “Why?” If you don’t have a compelling reason, you’re often better off not we
It is not critical to assign weightings to your balanced scorecard focus areas. The premise of a scorecard is that total success is derived when a balanced approach is taken in managing organizational strategies. What the weighting implies is that an increased focus on strategies within a specific perspective (focus area) is applied for a period of time.
This works well for organizations that have an established strategic framework and direction. For new organizations or groups with a brand new scorecard, it is better to wait until development has been done around organizational initiatives and metric baselines have been established. Until this occurs, weighting your intents will have little to no impact as the priorities and strategies don’t exist.
While it sometimes makes sense to shift weighting values in order to communicate an area of priority for action, it is critical that you don’t lose sight of the fact that success occurs when the focus areas are balanced. In other words, a focus area may require more attention for the planning period, but total success for the organization still requires balanced success in each area of the scorecard.
Unless you have a good reason, hold off until you do.