Five principles of successful organizations emerged from Kaplan and Norton’s research on successful Balanced Scorecard adaptors. Hence, the five principles describe the key elements of building an organization that can focus on strategy while delivering breakthrough results. Additionally, high-performance groups depend heavily on effective facilitation and participant ownership.

The nineties are arguably the most worldwide productive in economic history. Because productivity accelerated, market values rose, and unemployment fell to record lows. However, in a Zook survey, only 13 percent of organizations achieved shareholder returns greater than the cost of capital. Therefore setting up the need for a return to strategy, such as the Balanced Scorecard. History will show a pattern of

“excessive exuberance”

to quote Alan Greenspan, and a shift from strategy to tactics, such as:

• First to market
• Operational excellence
• Customer relationship management

As companies abandoned strategy, they began to pay the price—proven by the implosion over the next fifteen years, leading us to, today. Compound that abandonment with a shift from a manufacturing era to the age of knowledge. Notice the transformation in the workplace . . .

Five principles of Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard include . . .

1. Align the organization to the strategy—Nobody is smarter than everybody and robust alignment requires multiple perspectives. An effective, neutral facilitator is the best choice for securing alignment among a group of people.
2. Make strategy a continual process—The journey is more important than the destination, and there is no better guide on a journey than a well-prepared facilitator using an appropriate methodology.
3. Make strategy everyone’s job—Ownership is key and facilitated sessions can secure individual commitments that must be met to save face. The key output of any facilitated session is agreement on WHO does WHAT and WHEN.
4. Mobilize change through executive leadership—Big egos demand great skill and facilitators earn their income over and over when forced to deal with executives, who many times embrace being rational as what is best for them, rather than the entire group. Facilitation helps avoid such a fallacy.
5. Translate the strategy into operational terms—Requiring a life cycle of activities as ideas are transformed from the abstract to the concrete.  Hence, no better leader can be found than one who manages context on behalf of the subject matter experts.

The message becomes clear. When you want to accelerate results, you better place a high value on the role of facilitator. They can pay for themselves many times over. They may generate more economic value for the organization than other roles, even the CEO. The CEO who has the answer but is unable to realize these five principles within their own organization will likely generate sub-optimal returns.

Balanced Scorecard

______

Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Register for a workshop or forward this to someone who should. MGRUSH facilitation workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each participant practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International^®, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

Facilitation Expert

Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.

Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.

Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.

Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.