magazines including Fortune, Working Mother, Business Week and Equal Opportunity. And although UNUM did not reach their aggressive goal of reaching top-quartile performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500 at 1997 year-end, the company did make the second quartile, and delivered annualized returns of 30.2 per cent. This excellent performance helped rank the company 39th of the 457 current Standard & Poor 500 companies with 10-year stock histories.
3.3 Executive BSC in a United Nations Agency
In February 2008, and during a period of 18 months a United Nations (UN) Agency in their New York City HQ decided to implement a new corporate management system, integrating a third generation BSC with the UN’s already existing Results Based Management system.
Initially, the Strategic Planning Office (SPO) and the Executive Committee, working with a consultant group produced two different versions of the BSC. These would be used in areas where collaboration between SPO and the EC was essential, and to ensure alignment in the results targeted by each group. After a 12 month pilot, the project was completed with a redesign of the Agency BSC to reflect evolving strategic goals and priorities.
The UN agency had already tried to implement a BSC during 2004-05, and significant work was done to develop and promote the BSC in-house. However, this initiative failed because the methodology was perceived to be too complex and there was a failure to actually sell its value at the most senior level, two of the most common pitfalls when attempting to implement a BSC. In 2006, the Executive Committee decided to adopt this methodology again and link it to the 2008-2011 Strategic Plan.
An internal analysis revealed that:
1. The agency was good at planning for the medium term. Office Management plans and personal development plans were already in place thanks in part to a very capable strategic planning team
2. Perceived difficulties often came up when trying to consistently translate these planning documents into planned-for results, in particular for the team in New York.
3. While field-level results and improvements were impressive, HQ-generated management improvements were less obvious
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4. Accountability at the Executive Committee level was not strongly established, with little discussion of the objectives to be pursued jointly
One conclusion was that these weaknesses were due in part to the fact that current plans contained more ambition than central management resources could deliver.
Implementation would initially follow the same basic framework: Establish the Destination Statement, design a Strategic Linkage Model and then define the metrics and targets to meet the objectives. Problems appeared, however, when due to cultural norms of the UN, it became unfeasible for the Executive Committee members themselves to participate in the BSC development. Instead, a group was established comprised of Regional Representatives, staff functions (via video conference) and four Country Offfice managers.
Mixed management levels in the room affected the workshop, since it reduced the amount of open contributions of all attendees. The process was also affected by the limitations of video conferencing technology in a workshop such as this, a problem which unfortunately could not be circumvented due to the nature of the organization structure. At the end of the workshop, a Strategic Linkage Model (SLM) was produced. The SPO continued leading the work under direct guidance of the Executive Office and several meetings took place with the Chief Executive, which allowed the project team to explain the accountability-related benefits of the design process. The meetings also secured the Chief Executive’s support for completing and deploying a full EC level BSC.
The EC decided that a “management” results perspective would be the top current priority, which allowed them to limit the development issues on the BSC. A final retreat session also took place with the consulting group to agree how the review process would operate and to ensure that cross-functional working could take place in an environment where “silo” working was already strongly established.
The UN Agency decided to pilot the BSC at a regional level before considering any use in Country Offices. The pilot included:
• Development by the Regional Director, along with the consulting group of a draft Destination Statement for 2001
• A workshop with the Regional management team in HQ to create an SLM
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• Work on metrics and targets by the Regional management team
• Usage of the BSC tool by the regional management team to set and manage their performance agenda during 2007
After nine months of starting the pilot, the EC decided to review the BSC to focus the Director’s attention solely on the results, and delegate all activities to the deputy directors.
This would also help to bring the BSC into line with the already existing departmental planning processes. This reset process had the goal to use agreed priority results to drive activities (due to the need for more coherence with the UN Results-based approach and to reflect the Director’s decision to delegate activities to produce those results to their deputies).
Results would also be divided into two categories: Management Results (efficient running of the Agency) and Development results (linked to the Agency’s core mandate). This would help give the BSC more influence with the rest of the organization, according to the implementation team.
In early 2008, the Executive Committee met again to revise their BSC, as explained above.
The results differed from the consulting group’s SLM in having a more simplistic linking of results and activities, and being developed from results down to the required activities to achieve those results, rather than bottom up.
The third generation BSC implementation has helped to bring transparency of performance and it is also helping to strengthen accountability for performance at the top levels of the Agency. It has also promoted open discussion and consensus across the EC and has also started to eliminate the “silo” working mentality that existed in the organization. Directors have also been able to adopt a performance review process that reinforces accountability for results, and it has also enabled improved performance at the centre, which translates in improved delivery at the country level.
Indications are that this time, the Agency has implemented a management tool that the Executive Committee believes in, and will help to support improved Agency results as it continues to evolve.
It has become evident that the BSC has been beneficial for this organization, but the implementation faced several challenges from which we can learn, just like the SPO did.
Among some of the most important ones:
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• Explaining to the Executive Committee the need for a top level BSC to drive the execution of the Agency’s strategic priorities
• Influencing the CEO’s office to replace their CEO-centered process with one owned by the whole Executive Committee
• Engaging new Directors in the process who had not been part of the initial design
• Managing continued attack on the project from other Directors
• Clarifying users of the differences between priorities and the metrics used to monitor progress against those priorities. Also, persuading users to manage the objectives, not the numbers