Balance Scorecard

I believe that Cattaraugus County Rehabilitation Center (CCRC) had done an effective job of implementing a balance scorecard (BSC) approach in a fashion that reflects their organizational mission and vision. Although the BSC method has been used in the for-profit organizations for many years I believe that the CCRC has made a significant effort to ensure that it works for their organization. There was a lot of push back from the people who work at the center when it was first introduced, they believed it was just another quick-witted approach that would just fail, but as the new director of strategic management began to slowly improve the ability of the management to take a closer look and to start facilitating the implementation of BSC method to their organization.

Since the BSC wasn’t designed for the not-for-profit rehabilitation center, it had to work quite a bit to try and incorporate the BSC in order for the organization to adapt quickly. CCRC has seen great benefits from adapting the BSC to the center but the greatest benefit maybe that many personnel within the center have noticed how much more encompassing that the strategic planning is and not solely focusing at a long-term plan. They now understand that is it necessary to become aligned with each area of the Center with overall strategic objectives for each. The Center has begun to focus on the importance of interrelationships among the perspectives in the BSC and has enabled workers within the Center to see things they had not thought about in the past and relate them to act more responsibly and effectively. The centre has as its objective in this focus area the objective to increase staff competencies, provide personal growth opportunities to employees, promote, train and practice corporate values, among others. Another trend that will be changing is the leadership trends in organizations. The center is covered against this uncertainty by its objective to develop & retain personnel who will in turn grow to be the center’s future leaders.

The balanced scorecard will also enable the rehabilitation centre to adopt technology. Being technologically savvy is a trend in leadership, management and operation that the present and future leader(s) will need, which is key to organizational effectiveness. Technological savvy has rapidly become an integral aspect of today’s operational effectiveness. Technology facilitates communication amongst leaders and employees, regardless of their physical location or when the communication needs to occur.

The choice of the use of the BSC is the emphasis on employee engagement. Employers are still having major retention problems and this is costing them a fortune. They are now focusing more on employee engagement to increase their retention rates. A recent survey by MSW Research and Dale Carnegie training found only a mere 29% of employees are fully engaged. This therefore meets the centre’s strategy to increase employee’s attachment to the organizations values and a deeper regard of the values based culture that the centre has adopted. The focus of the approach on the consumer as the most important concern to the stakeholder is perhaps the most important move by the strategic plan of the rehabilitation center. Any other for profit organization that adopts the balance scorecard has always placed financial aspect at the top of the diagram, but the center has switched this financial portion with the consumer aspect. This shows that the strategy is very much in line with the center’s vision to be a leader in providing and assessing desired services to people with disabilities. They have clearly expressed to all that service to people with disability comes above all else.

This case analysis provides a strong conviction that the BSC is an impeccable tool for management of any organization. It provides a clear context of what the organization is all about and enables the organization to focus on what is truly important to the organization. The BSC then enables the organization to break down their main focus area into attainable and measurable metrics such that the CCRC is able to track its progress towards attaining their most important target that will be the eventual attainment of their mission. The BSC has also made it a significant point to prove through this case analysis to be multi faceted. It can be applied in any business and will enable the business to focus on their main reason of existence, which is the mission, and then enable them to breakdown its main goal to track its progress. Through the case analysis, the BSC has been employed in a not-for-profit organization, which is unlike other organizations. The not-for-profit model has managed to enable the organization to come up with processes that it can use to track its progress.

REFERENCES
1. Lamb, Robert, Boyden, Competitive strategic management, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984 2. The Top Ten Workforce Trends – Institute for Global Futures, Retrieved on 12th April 2014 3. Martello, M., Watson, J., Fischer, M., (2008). Implementing a balanced scorecard in a not-for-profit organization. Journal of Business & Economics Research.