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Most popular ideas in the domain of organizational management have a limited shelf-life. Those that gain widespread attention usually do so on the strength of a published work. My bookshelves are filled with titles that in their time, were purported to be the next ‘big idea’ in management, but have since faded into relative obscurity. This pattern is as much a function of the audience for the ideas as the ideas themselves; executives and managers crave the easy answers and magical insights that are promised by these works. So when an idea remains relevant and applicable for more than a few years, it stands out. 

Of course, balanced scorecard has been an exceptionally durable concept. The idea of a scorecard (a collection of measures) as a tool for management has been around for decades, and is thought to have originated at General Electric during the 1950s. Kaplan and Norton elaborated the idea of a scorecard as a tool for strategic management beginning with their first Harvard Business Review articles on the topic in 1992 and 1993, and their book The Balanced Scorecard in 1996. The BSC articles and original book were extremely popular, and remain so today.But I never recommend Kaplan and Norton’s first BSC book to anyone embarking on a journey of strategic management.

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As elegant and appealing as the BSC idea was, the early literature focused far more on what the BSC is than how organizations should actually use it. Combined with the initial popularity of the BSC, this gap in the literature led to many failed BSC implementations among early adopters in the late 1990s. There simply wasn’t enough documented experience to understand how to successfully implement the BSC, and trial and error is an especially inefficient way to learn.

Reports of widespread failure of BSC implementations led Kaplan and Norton to write their second book on BSC in 2000, The Strategy-Focused Organization. This is a far better place to start than the first book.

The SFO concept (as it came to be known in the BSC practitioner community) was based on observations of the many organizations failing with the BSC implementations, and the far smaller number that were successful. It identifies five key behaviors in those organizations that were successful. Failing to model any of these is a powerful predictor of failure; adopting all five improves the likelihood but does not guarantee success. The SFO behaviors have influenced the work of every serious BSC practitioner I’ve ever met.

1. Mobilize and engage executive leaders with the necessity for organizational change and the strategic management process. It is not sufficient to get the senior executive to agree to implement BSC. He or she, along with all members of the organization’s leadership team must commit to no less than changing the way they manage the organization, and must understand that the implementation process happens of the course of years, not weeks or months. A senior executive looking to BSC as a quick fix is a certain predictor of a failed effort.
2. Translate the strategy into language that everyone can understand, a strategy map. Remarkably, many organizations implement their BSCs without developing a strategy map; this outcome is the result of a lack of centrality of the strategy map in Kaplan and Norton’s early writing. Bluntly, if you don’t have a strategy map as the basis for your measures, you don’t have a balanced scorecard.
3. Align the parts of the organization with the overall strategy. Except in the very smallest of organizations, it is necessary to interpret the enterprise strategy for each part of the organization; business units and support organizations, such as information technology and human capital. This usually means subordinate strategy maps and BSCs that are cascaded from the overall strategy map.
4. Ensure that each member of the organization understands his or her role in executing strategy. The natural inclination for executives to play their strategy close to the vest inhibits this vital behavior. Broadly communicating the content of the strategy and an unvarnished accounting of the organization’s actual performance are table stakes; embedding the language of the strategy in each employee’s performance management process is the first realization of this behavior.
5. Embed the process of strategic management in business processes. Because BSC-enabled strategic management is unfamiliar and can make leaders a bit uncomfortable, the reflexive tendency is to quarantine the BSC from everyday management process. Successful organizations recognize that strategic management is an ongoing process, not simply a once-a-year event.

Needless to say, there is much more to say on the five SFO behaviors. Remember that skipping any of these will almost certainly mean your change program will fail.

How is your organization doing at each of these?

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Having pre-meetings is far different from having post-meetings. Post-meetings happen because not everything that needed to be said came out during the actual meeting, due to fear, mainly. Pre-meetings are held to make sure that what needs to happen in the actual meeting actually happens.

What do I mean by the actual meeting (herein referred to as the Meeting)?  The Meeting is where people with crazy schedules (usually in leadership positions) somehow find a way to meet all at the same time. The topic for the Meeting, in whole or in part, is your change initiative.

To make the best use of the team’s time during the Meeting, only do the things in the Meeting that need to be done together as a team.Focus the team on the task at hand, whether it is a discussion about solutions or whether a decision must be made. Everything else should be done beforehand in pre-meetings with individuals or small groups.

Some of the things you can take care of in pre-meetings are:

• Training
• Seeking opinions, to see how each person is leaning
• Answering questions, since some will not ask in front of the rest of the team
• Target key people to speak up during the meeting
• Persuade people who need persuading

Notice that I’m not talking about a pre-meeting e-mail. This is a real sit-down (or phone call if necessary) meeting where you are preparing individuals for the Meeting (and also helping you prepare for the Meeting). If the Meeting and its desired outcome are really important to the success of your change initiative, an e-mail is not going to cut it.

Having pre-meetings may seem like overkill, or even like playing politics. But, if you’ve ever been in a leadership team meeting that has careened out of control or that has become stuck on an irrelevant or minute point, most likely there was not enough preparation of the attendees beforehand.

Take the time to have pre-Meeting meetings so you can focus the Meeting on achieving the desired outcome for your initiative.

(Editor’s note: This post first appeared in the Change Starts Here blog at Enclaria.com)

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One such word I find myself using often in my writings here is deliberate. Both its verb and adjective meanings (which are sometimes pronounced differently) powerfully apply to our interest in strategy, change, and organizational leadership. Let’s take a closer look.

Main Entry: ¹de·lib·er·ate

Pronunciation: \di-ˈli-bə-ˌrāt\

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): de·lib·er·at·ed; de·lib·er·at·ing

Date: 14th century

intransitive verb : to think about or discuss issues and decisions carefully

transitive verb : to think about deliberately and often with formal discussion before reaching a decision

synonyms see think

In other words, to deliberate, we formally discuss issues carefully before making a decision.

Main Entry: ²de·lib·er·ate

Pronunciation: \di-ˈli-bə-rət, -ˈlib-rət\

Function: adjective

Etymology: Middle English, from Latin deliberatus, past participle of deliberare to consider carefully, perhaps alteration of *delibrare, from de- + libra scale, pound

Date: 15th century

1 : characterized by or resulting from careful and thorough consideration <a deliberate decision>
2 : characterized by awareness of the consequences <deliberate falsehood>
3 : slow, unhurried, and steady as though allowing time for decision on each individual action involved <a deliberate pace>

synonyms see voluntary

In other words, decisions are deliberate when they result from slow, unhurried, steady, careful, and thorough consideration.

When becoming familiar with a new client, I like to find out about recent decisions that have been most influential to the people in the organization, and to its direction as a whole. Capturing and deconstructing the history of key decisions reveals much about the culture and leadership style of the organization. Some leaders exercise power autonomously, and express their own beliefs and judgments through decisions made without apparent deliberation. These leaders may reveal these decisions in the context of discussions intended to give the appearance of deliberation, but participants may describe the decision as having been a “done deal” well before their input was sought. Autocratic leadership has the benefit of efficiency, but amplify the risk of wrong decisions.

By contrast, other organizations are painfully slow at making decisions. Without prompting, one of my clients described her organization as having “analysis paralysis.” After working with another client for several months, I began to describe its decision-making process as “deliberative” – which was a gentle euphemism for excess discussion, and not a compliment. And yet another client prompted me to observe that “at XYZ, ‘yes’ is never yes, ‘no’ is never no, there are only endless degrees of ‘maybe’.” These organizations suffer from their inability to quickly recognize and act upon threat and opportunity.

As we continue to puzzle over the inability of most organizations to reliably execute strategy, it is important to examine how each one makes decisions. There is no one ‘right’ decision style, but it seems to me that the elusive and desirable approach would be one in which decisions are made carefully, as a result of efficient consideration by leaders and expert stakeholders working together, yet quickly enough to enable timely action. Decisions made carefully yet quickly are acted upon tenaciously, yet subject to careful scrutiny and a healthy skepticism that objectively separates the decision from the decision makers. Poor decisions are recognized thoughtfully and early, with timely corrective actions taken. These ideals, to me, are core definition of the deliberate organization.

How has your organization made its important decisions? Were good decisions made quickly and efficiently? Did leaders stand by decisions, or drift in a tide of uncertainty? Were poor decisions recognized and dealt with properly? Were risks understood and accepted? How would you define the deliberate organization?

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Sir Andrew Likierman

An unusually practical article appears in the October issue of Harvard Business Review on the topic of performance measurement. I regret that I can’t share a link with you, because HBR content is not available online, except to subscribers of the magazine (perhaps the folks at Harvard haven’t yet read about the idea of Free). No matter. Though I can’t share the article itself with you, at least I can summarize it here.

Entitled The Five Traps of Performance Measurement, Andrew Likierman’s article is concise and valuable. Sir Andrew Likierman is no less than the Dean of the London Business School, a non-executive director of Barclay’s Bank, and Chairman of the UK’s National Audit Office. He knows of what he writes.

As strategists and change agents, we’re all part of the process of performance measurement and management in our organizations. The task of measurement is neither easy, nor especially satisfying, at least in the short run. And those charged with measurement easily fall prey to pitfalls and traps. Sir Andrew highlights five that are most common.

1. Measuring Against Yourself. While it is important to understand change in performance measures from one period to the next, it is vital to understand how the organization is doing relative to its competitors. While competitive benchmarks may be difficult and potentially costly to obtain, there are ways to understand how one is doing relative to the competition. Likierman offers the example of Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s Quality Index, which captures customers’ plans for future rentals. From a random telephone survey of recent customers, Enterprise is able to project future increases or decreases in market share.  
2. Looking Backward. Comparisons with last year’s numbers aren’t useful if you’re not also looking at leading indicators that help make better decisions now to predict future performance. Likierman moves from this assertion to a discussion of the quality of management decisions as a leading indicator of success. He cites one European investment bank that tracks the eventual outcome of deals the bank chose not to do; if they turn out to be bad deals, the no-go decision is rated as a success. It is as important to focus on what the organization chooses not to do as it is to track what is done.
3. Putting Your Faith in Numbers. Likierman asserts that numbers-driven managers tend to produce high volumes of low-quality data. There is a tendency to use popular measures (ones that may be fashionable in an industry), rather than choosing the right ones for the firm’s unique strategy. An example given is that of the Net Promoter Score, the likelihood that a customer will recommend a product or service to others. But the NPS is useful only if customers are likely to make purchase decisions on the basis of a recommendation. Another symptom of this trap is trying to fashion links to financial performance when no tangible links exist; the apparent ROI of such service functions as HR or especially IT is far more circumstantial than real. Most of the numbers that I’ve seen used in IT ROI calculations are somewhere between rough estimates and wishful thinking – certainly not reliable enough for making decisions.
4. Gaming Your Metrics. It comes as no surprise that people whose performance is being measured will attempt to influence those numbers. This happens at an institutional level, not just with individuals. As Likierman reports, Royal Dutch Shell has paid $470 million since 2004 to settle lawsuits contending that Shell overstated its reserves. Morgan Stanley was reported to have deliberately lost a €20 million deal in order to improve its position in a global ranking. And who hasn’t seen sales behavior change at the end of the fiscal year, either trying to book business in the current year, or delay booking until the following year? All of these are examples of deliberate decisions to manipulate measurements. Likierman accepts the reality that gaming will happen, but prescribes a diversity of indicators that would be harder to manipulate; law firm Cliffor Chance changed from simply measuring billable hours to a portfolio of seven criteria on which to base bonuses; including measures of work quality and integrity.
5. Sticking to Your Numbers Too Long. Once instituted, measurement systems become part of enterprise culture, and evolve more slowly than the organization itself. By deliberately stating the purpose of a measure (and connecting to a strategic intent, as in the balanced scorecard process), leaders are more likely to question an indicator that has outlived its usefulness. To me, the sign of a healthy strategic management process is one in which measures are easily and frequently challenged, and the portfolio of measures is frequently revised.

Likierman concludes by reminding us that most business managers are not experts in performance measurement, and that line managers suffer from hopeless conflicts of interest in the measures design process. Measures design must include checks and balances, and (I believe) is best enabled by an outside, objective facilitator.

Are these pitfalls present in your organization? What are the other traps you’ve seen? Please comment below.

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A crucial step in driving alignment with strategy after the strategy itself has been established is to capture the activities (projects, initiatives, call them what you will) that are already underway. A matrix of the strategic initiatives against the strategic objectives almost always reveals opportunities to improve alignment; initiatives that don’t map well to objectives, objectives with no initiatives, and in some cases, objectives with too many initiatives.

Unfortunately, many organizations struggle to even create the alignment matrix. With neither a centralized project management office (PMO) to capture and track the status of discretionary activity, nor any understanding of the labor actually being allocated to each initiative, leaders have little more than capital and expense budgets as a weak indicator of actual strategic initiative activity.Discretionary projects often have significant labor expense, but little or no capital budget. Labor is treated as a sunk cost that is allocated to business units and departments on the basis of full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), not to specific projects and initiatives. Middle managers have discretion to undertake operational improvement projects and strategic initiatives with limited senior level oversight beyond the capital budget process.

Managerial discretion is biased towards operational improvements, which tend to have more tangible benefits delivered sooner than strategic initiatives whose benefits are less tangible in the near term. The pool of labor available for discretionary efforts is the difference between total labor available, and the necessary effort to run the business everyday. Keeping the lights on always takes precedence. Whatever is left over is given over to discretionary activity, divided between operational improvement and strategic initiatives. It is generally the same people whose time can be allocated to each.

Large organizations become especially adept at optimizing the status quo; making current business processes as efficient as possible. Strategic change represents the unknown, and a greater risk of an individual manager being seen as mis-allocating his or her labor resources. So in the aggregate, little labor is left to devote to strategic change.

A more enlightened approach requires a comprehensive understanding of discretionary activity across the enterprise, captured and administered by a robust PMO function.Workforce time reporting enables executives to understand not just what projects are underway, but to manage the set of projects as an investment portfolio. When viewed this way, executives are able to reduce the total number of projects (many of which may consume resources with little progress to show for it), better balance FTEs between strategic and operational change, and drive a higher share of projects to deliver their intended value on time and on budget. In the absence of this more enlightened approach, it comes as no surprise when there is a failure to execute strategy.

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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his speech on healthcare. REUTERS/Jason Reed

U.S. President Barack Obama gave his highly-anticipated speech on health care reform to a joint session of the U.S. Congress and a national TV audience yesterday evening. For those outside of the U.S., speeches to both houses of Congress are relatively rare (except for an annual ‘state of the union’ address), and this speech marked a crucial point in the intense health care reform debate that has been raging here for the past several months. I am sure that several other bloggers have already or will shortly provide their take on the speech itself, so I will spare you my own interpretation. But Obama used the ‘best practice’ term to describe a couple of U.S. regions in which per-capita health care costs are both significantly lower than average, while quality of care and outcomes are better than average (a theme in a New Yorker article I reviewed over the summer), in his desire to improve the cost and quality of health care across the country.

It was interesting to hear Obama cite the concept of ‘best practices’ that is often used in business settings, but rarely presented to the public at large. The idea of capturing and sharing of best practices across an industry or an organization is both pervasive and elusive. I’ve yet to see or hear of an organization that claims to have a best practice for capturing and sharing best practices, and as such, I am a bit skeptical of the term in general.

My reflexive check of the Wikipedia entry on best practices yielded the following tasty morsel:

“As the term (best practices) has become more popular, some organizations have begun using the term “best practices” to refer to what are in fact merely ‘rules’, causing a linguistic drift in which a new term such as “good ideas” is needed to refer to what would previously have been called “best practices.”

Amen to that. I think that comment captures much of my skepticism. It seems to me that implicit in the idea of best practices is that an organization has evolved to a point where it is doing the same thing in more than one way, and that it can be objectively determined that one way is better than the other. Best practice sharing sounds good when discussed in an executive setting, but reconciling different approaches to an esoteric task requires the participation of the very people who are using the different approaches. While sometimes it may be obvious that one practice needs to be abandoned, it is far more likely that no clear winner will be determined.

Anyone who has ever gotten or renewed a drivers’ license at their state’s motor vehicle division (DMV) knows that the process can be slow and bureaucratic. I’ve often imagined how useful it would be for an independent organization to benchmark the efficiency, effectiveness, and consumer satisfaction of each of the 50 DMVs across the U.S. and to use the results to identify and ultimately implement best practices across all of them (some overseas readers of the Tenacious Blog may wonder why the U.S. doesn’t simply have one national process – that would be a whole other topic). But it is easy to see the flaw in my idea. Each of the 50 bureaucracies would incur a high risk of having its flaws objectively quantified and compared, while the chance of being found to have a best practice would be quite low. Even if politicians agreed to the benchmark, they’d encounter considerable resistance to actually implementing any changes to the status quo.

Such is also the case in organizations. The challenge of best practices lies not in the identification of the candidate practices, but with the choice and implementation of a particular practice. Risks are high, benefits are low, subversion of the concept is easily and often accomplished.

Or perhaps I am too cynical. Does anyone reading this want to offer a description of a best practice in best practice sharing? Please comment below.

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As change agents, we frequently Dance in the Moment (a term I learned a few years ago in the CTI coaching program). While we work toward an envisioned future, we can only handle what is right in front of us, which is constantly shifting based on the reactions to the strategies we’re using to try to influence change.

If you think of the process of change as a dance, you realize it’s a partnership between two entities. Even if you haven’t taken ballroom dancing classes (or watched Dancing With the Stars), you probably know that each person in the duo has a specific role: leader and follower.

A few of the moves that the leader does to show the follower where to go are overt gestures that can be observed from the audience. However, most of the time the follower just seems like she knows what to do next, even if the dance is not choreographed. For the most part, the dance is a series of subtle nudges by the leader: a tug of the hand, a slight pressure at the waist that indicate the steps and the direction to go next.

The follower, for her part, responds to the nudges with what she interprets as appropriate movements, and adds her own flair to the dance. Sometimes the corresponding movements are what the leader intended, and sometimes they aren’t. Depending on the leader’s ability to react quickly, the result can be a seamless transition, or it could be a disastrous fall. Either way, it is the role of the leader to make the follower look good.

It’s important to note that the dance doesn’t work at all without a third element: the music. The nudges by the leader mean nothing to the follower if there is no context, no framework that they share. The music tells the dancers if they are doing the Waltz or the Mambo. They won’t get very far without stepping on toes if they are performing one of each. The music also keeps them in step, moving together at the same time.

The analogies of the dance’s leader and follower to the subject of organizational change are obvious. But the music might be a lot of things. What do you think?

What role does music play in the dance of change?

(Editor’s note: This post first appeared in the Change Starts Here blog at Enclaria.com)

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The afterglow of the strategy map workshop didn’t last very long. Working closely with Linda, the next step was to recruit people in the WorldCo organization to identify prospective measures for the strategy map objectives. This process was designed to require minimal participation from leadership team members – the work was to be delegated deeper within the WorldcCo organization.

But even with this minimized commitment, we found it quite difficult to reach the eight members of Reggie’s leadership team – not only were they traveling, but they often simply didn’t respond to e-mails and phone calls. When we approached likely persons to become involved in measurement, they were unable to help without the approval of their managers (the members of the leadership team). Without any apparent cause, we had lost our momentum.

During our brief status meeting with Reggie a couple of weeks later, Linda and I (Karen cancelled at the last minute) fully understood the extent of the climate change. Reggie’s engagement was simply gone. He listened to our updates with impatience; each concern was met with a crisp “Got it, move on.” We only got about fifteen minutes of the promised hour with him. He acknowledged our concerns, and said that he would look into it and let us know about our requested actions to get the program back on track.

We never met with Reggie again.

It was later uncovered that not long after the strategy map workshop, several members of Reggie’s leadership team had met, without Reggie or Karen’s knowledge, to discuss their concerns about the strategy management and change programs. As we understood it, the expressed concern was about how much people time the program would entail, and how the leaders simply didn’t see a way to clear enough of their people’s time to do the work properly. It was never clear whether Reggie was informed of this separate meeting, but in retrospect, his loss of engagement may have been a reflection of his disappointment in his people, or in his own lack of real power to change things in WorldCo.

In retrospect, I believe that the post-workshop pushback to the program arose from the leadership team’s realization that the program would result in objective, and public measures of their performance. Rather than rallying around the change agenda, the leadership team rallied around their fear of the program, and were easily able to orchestrate the campaign of benign indifference that was ultimately fatal to the change program. The sabotage that killed WorldCo’s change program, seems all too similar to the tactics now playing out in the healthcare reform debate that is dominating the U.S. today. I shudder to think.

Postscript

With little support from Karen, Linda made a valiant effort to keep the WorldCo strategy program alive, to no avail. Although she found some opportunity to drive more successful change programs elsewhere in WorldCo’s parent enterprise, Linda soon left the company, and is now an effective independent consultant in the field of strategy execution. Karen, for all of her limited involvement in the heat of the effort, actually accepted a number of public speaking engagements in which she spoke glowingly about WorldCo, her change program, and Reggie’s leadership. But Karen, too was gone from WorldCo within two years. Reggie, of course, was promoted to a senior role in WorldCo’s parent two years later. And Reggie’s change agenda at WorldCo has not yet been accomplished.

Does WorldCo resemble your organization? Have you ever worked for a Reggie? Did you enjoy reading a five-part case study? Do you have a case you’d like to share? Please comment below.

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It would have been so easy for the workshop to have been awful. Forty-five executives and managers instead of the promised nine, many of whom had no advance understanding of what was going on. A not very cohesive leadership team, with at least some evidence of rivalry and political intrigue among them. Some open skepticism about the process (although this was typical), and an organization whose culture seemed to be all about impatience. And in me, a somewhat rattled facilitator.

And yet, it worked. During Reggie’s warm introduction of my colleague and me, he acknowledged that he had changed the rules on us by inviting so many people. He asked everyone in attendance to give us their full attention, and hoped that they would emerge from the day as excited about the work as he was. He said all the right things, and did so in a way that was both humble and energizing, and he electrified everyone in the room. I’ve rarely seen a leader so charismatic and so engaging. And he remained engaged all the way through the day.

The introductory material that comprised the kick-off meeting was received without much discussion, and it seemed as though most understood both our approach and the Reggie’s rationale for the program (remember that it was actually Karen’s idea to begin with). Any traces of skepticism were easily addressed, with Reggie’s backing. Karen and Linda were mostly silent – it was clearly Reggie’s show. As we got into the content of the strategy map itself, I suggested that we limit participation in the discussion to only the eight members of Reggie’s direct leadership team, and there was no resistance.

When leadership team interviews result in an aggressive change agenda, I tend to foster discussion about the ability of the organization to do everything at once; this is the concept of capacity for change I’ve written about earlier. But when the draft strategy map is timid (as was the case with WorldCo), I try to challenge the organization to reach for a more ambitious agenda. I had obtained Reggie’s blessing for this approach during our preview meeting. As we went through the strategic objectives one by one, I was able to guide the leadership team to strengthen the language, and to agree to stretch the WorldCo’s objectives enough to make the strategy into a real change program, rather than the perpetuation of the status quo I had feared. Reggie and his leaders were entirely on board, and everything flowed smoothly.

At the close of the meeting, we invited Reggie to get up and present the newly hatched strategy map, which he effectively did without skipping a beat. We identified performance advocates, and I briefly recapped the next steps in the process; identifying measures, collecting data, and reporting results, and communicating strategy across the entire WorldCo employee community. Reggie’s closing remarks were a ringing endorsement of the strategy map that his team had built (with our help), and he challenged everyone in the room to make the strategy a reality.

Next: Part V: Reality and reflection

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Each of the many dozens of strategy map workshops I have facilitated in my career has been different, but they have all been exhilarating. For up to eight hours, I (and typically a colleague) guide a group of executives to construct and agree to a concise yet richly detailed expression of the strategy for the organization (read more about the art and science of strategy map design). With only a few exceptions, executives emerged from their efforts highly satisfied with the result of their efforts, and energized about strategy execution.

Over the years, my colleagues and I have developed an understanding of the ingredients for a successful strategy map session. All members of the leadership team in attendance, and fully engaged (e-mail and telephone calls only permitted on breaks, no laptops or PDAs allowed). No more than about fifteen people in the room. A carefully developed draft strategy map that has been previewed with the leader of the organization. The pacing of the discussions that enhance and revise the draft map must be carefully managed, and it is important to “read the room” to sense when it is time to seek closure on a discussion.

The unique challenge for the particular workshop at WorldCo was the fact that we also had to accomplish what normally would have taken place during a separate kick-off meeting. An overview of the rationale for implementing the strategic management system, a brief review of the concepts of balanced scorecard itself, and an understanding of the project calendar needed to be accomplished in less than 90 minutes if we were to have the time to accomplish the strategy map workshop in the same day. Kick-off meetings sometimes become a bit of a challenge themselves when team members are not fully bought-in to the idea of a strategic management system. Overcoming grumbling and skepticism can cause kick-off meetings to run a bit long, and for that reason alone, it is better to schedule them separately. In an organization where we had already learned that time was always scarce, and that the culture accepted the reality of executives double- and triple- booking their calendars, my biggest concern was not finishing the map in the allotted time. And if needed, it would take weeks to schedule a follow-up meeting. My colleague and I were a bit edgy.

Offsetting our concerns was two key benefits. With only Reggie and his eight direct reports, Linda, my colleague, and I would only be facilitating discussion among nine executives. The challenge of facilitation increases greatly with more executives in the room, and fifteen is about as many as had been facilitated successfully. And, our draft strategy map had been properly vetted with Reggie, and nothing on it was likely to be especially controversial. So we were in pretty good shape.

When we arrived to set up at the meeting room in a nearby hotel early that morning, I was dismayed to see a much larger room than expected set with around eight round tables and six chairs at each, instead of the small “U” -shaped table arrangement we had requested. Karen sheepishly explained that she had gotten a call from Reggie the day before (while I was airborne to WorldCo’s headquarters), suggesting that each of his direct reports invite a few of their direct reports to attend the workshop also. Apparently, Reggie was so pleased with the draft strategy map that he wanted to involve as many members of his extended management team as possible in our workshop. Not wanting to push back on what seemed (at least to Reggie) like a good idea, Karen agreed. So instead of facilitating a group of nine, we were set to facilitate a group of forty or more managers, many of whom had no prior knowledge of the program. Needless to say, I was upset and concerned, but with 40-plus people already beginning to arrive and mill around the lavish breakfast buffet, there wasn’t much that could be done.

Next: Part IV: Workshop and afterglow

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