Previously, I focused on developing objectives for the Financial, Customer and Internal Process perspectives of the strategy map. In this post I will conclude on the four-part series “creating objectives for your organization’s strategy map perspectives” by focusing on the Employee Learning and Growth perspective.

In the preceding posts, I emphasized on the importance of balancing the objectives of your strategy map as this gives a clear indication of the main drivers of your business’s performance.

How balanced are the objectives on your corporate strategy map? Most organizations make the huge mistake of focusing only on financial objectives at the expense of other non-financial objectives.

Objectives in the Employee Learning and Growth perspective of the strategy map are really the enablers of the other perspectives.

Remember the whole idea of constructing the strategy map is to communicate the strategy and identify the cause-and-effect relationships between organizational processes responsible for effectively executing that strategy and driving business performance.

In today’s knowledge economy, it is critical for managers to know and understand that intangible assets are the main drivers of value creation.

In the last two decades or so, the value of intangible assets in contributing towards business success has increased tremendously outpacing the contribution of fixed assets.

These intangible assets of the business can be split into three distinctive areas of capital – human capital, information capital and organizational capital.

Human capital refers to skills, talent and know-how necessary to support the execution of the business strategy.

Motivated employees with the right kind of skills, know-how and tools are the key ingredients in driving process improvements, meeting customer expectations and ultimately driving financial returns.

Since people are any organization’s most critical source of value, having the right mix of human capital objectives in the Employee Learning and Growth perspective is critical.

Possible objectives relating to human capital include “Close the skills gap in strategic positions”, “Train employees for success” and “Recruit and retain the best and the brightest employees”.

Be clear though what you mean by “best” and “brightest” as these terms are relative.

When it comes to closing the skills gap in strategic positions, it is crucial to understand that not all jobs are created equally. At the same time, not all jobs being filled within the company are critical to achieving your strategy.

It is therefore important to match your best people with the most strategically critical jobs. The starting point involves identifying those positions that are pivotal to ensuring the successful execution of key processes as set forth in the Internal Process perspective of your strategy map.

This will ultimately drive your customer value proposition and in turn ensure you achieve your stated financial objectives.

Organizations that have successfully managed to close the skills gap in strategic positions have done so through training and retaining current key staff, tailoring recruitment of new employees to the strategic needs of the organization and putting in place effective succession planning programs to help capture the knowledge of long-term employees and pass it on to the next generation.

Training employees for success goes beyond simply counting the number of training hours per month, per quarter, per half year or per full year.

This is unlikely to lead to sustained business success. What managers need to do is, after the training program, assess and evaluate a change in behavior; a demonstration of the new skills or knowledge in action and an improvement in results.

This helps determine the effectiveness of the training program, focus future training in specific areas to bolster skills and knowledge and ultimately improve the company’s future performance.

Information capital refers to the information systems, networks and infrastructure required to support the strategy.

Today, technology is an enabler of business strategy. It is the engine that keeps companies and entire industries moving forward and remaining competitive.

Thus having the right mix of information capital and aligning IT with strategy is critical to executing strategy effectively and achieving sustainable business performance.

Given the pervasive influence of technology in today’s modern economy, almost every organization should consider information capital objectives on its strategy map. Possible objectives relating to information capital include:

• Improve the organization’s technology infrastructure.
• Leverage technology to manage risks, execute strategy and drive business performance.
• Increase knowledge management and information sharing within the organization.
• Create, share and use information effectively for better decision-making.

It is therefore critical to consider the linkage between technology and strategy in business. The objectives you choose under this class of capital should reflect the contribution of IT you require in order to successfully execute your business strategy.

Organizational capital focuses on the ability of the organization to rally and sustain the process of change required to deliver the strategy. When it comes to organizational capital, there are two key elements to consider – culture and alignment.

How are things done at your workplace? Do you support team work, positive feedback, and innovation or a combative management and meeting style prevails? Every now and then, you need to gauge your organization’s current culture and determine whether it is aligned with your strategic direction.

Should you wish to fully exploit the advantages of intangible assets such as culture and knowledge, it is therefore critical to ensure the actions of your employees are aligned with the organization’s mission, values, vision, and most ultimately, strategy.

Thus employees should have a clearer understanding of the building blocks of the organization’s mission, values, vision and strategy.

Having the right culture that is aligned to the strategy can be achieved through:

• Recruiting and selecting people you believe embody the culture you are attempting to either maintain or create.
• Intense socialization and training initiatives which demonstrate what you expect from employees.
• Utilizing the organization’s formal reward systems to advance culture. For example, if you value teamwork, customer-centric approach and attitude and innovation, those traits should be tangibly rewarded in an effort to have that culture deeply entrenched.

Misalignment of culture and strategy can lead to disastrous results. To ensure alignment, you ought to review the cascaded Balanced Scorecards from throughout the organization.

While most of your scorecards will rightly contain unique objectives and measures, they should be aligned toward a common corporate strategy.

To sum up, your strategy map should help you identify the specific capabilities in your organization’s intangible assets that are required for delivering exceptional performance in the critical internal processes.

I hope you enjoyed this four-part series on creating objectives for your organization’s strategy map. I welcome your thoughts and comments.