Scenario
A bank in the Middle East had just completed the crafting of the strategy with the help of a consulting team. They had spent tremendous time and effort identifying how to take advantage of the country’s double-digit Gross Domestic Product (GDP). After 18 months, the bank’s board signed off on the strategy.
Approach Adopted
Surprisingly, despite the time spent on developing the strategy, it was discovered that when the leaders were asked individually to define the strategy, many different perspectives were revealed. To overcome this, the CEO decided to adopt the Balance Scorecard to create a one-page summary showing how each business contributed to the overall strategy and its implementation. This Strategy Map identified the strategic objectives and, even more important, created consensus on what it meant to every business among the leadership team. Accomplishing this was no mean feat.
After a couple of weeks reflecting on the Map and the objectives, they created the Measures that would track the impact of the new strategy. Some new measures were added. For example, even though customer service was a key component of the strategy, a measure for customer satisfaction needed to be put into place. Where possible, however, existing measures were adopted.
Targets for every measure were set and action plans created to implement the strategy. A successful best practice from the CEO was that every leadership meeting started with a review of the map and measures. As an example of a key success factor, in their team meetings the leaders switched from talking 80 percent of the time about operations (and firefighting) to 80 percent discussing strategy and what needed to be done.
The adoption of measures for the new strategy greatly assisted in its successful implementation. The following year, the bank showed record profits.
