Case:

Explain the process of strategy mapping and how it relates to performance management and establishing value propositions. You may discuss this theoretically or use the Glacier Inn case study presented in Armitage and Scholey (2009) to serve as an example for integrating these ideas. Alternatively, you can use the Hazard Action Zone case study presented in Murby and Gold (2005) if you'd prefer.

Armitage, H., & Scholey, C. (2006). Using strategy maps to drive performance. Society of Mgt. Accountants of Canada.

Murby, L., & Gould, S. (2005). Effective performance management with the balanced scorecard: Technical report. Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Assignment Expectations

Your essay should be 3 to 4 pages long and include the following:

Introduction: In this part of your essay you will need to introduce your topic and provide a very brief overview of the key points you plan to make in your paper.

Analysis: In this section you will present several arguments in favor of your thesis statement. Discuss how either Glacier Inn or Hazard Action Zone effectively used strategic mapping (or how they failed to do so).

Conclusion: Wrap up your argument with a clear and cogent synopsis of your findings. Do your best to convince your reader (aka, your professor) as to your position.

Additional Instructions: Your essay should be 3 to 4 pages in length (not counting your title page or references). You must include a list of references. APA formatting is preferred. Do not paste in sections of text into your essay. All of your work must be written in your own words. It's OK to use a short quote now and again, but quotations must be in quotation marks and properly cited. In-text citations should be used anytime you are borrowing somebody else's ideas, or information. That is to say, if you are borrowing a thought from a publication from J. Neutron's article written in 2010, that section of text must be followed with (Neutron, 2010). Quotations, data, and general ideas (put into your own words) should all be cited.

Discussion

The home page of this module identifies several measures of the learning and growth perspective, such as
- Real-time availability of accurate customer and internal process information to front-line employees
- Ability to launch new products
- Ability to create more value for customers
- Ability to penetrate new markets
- Alignment of employee incentives with overall organizational success factors
- Rates of improvement in critical customer-based and internal processes

Consideration of these measures reveals that it can be difficult to quantify these factors. For your first posting in this Discussion, identify one specific example of a measure of learning and growth measure that you feel could be critical to an organization, but difficult to measure. For your second and third posting, choose another student's measure and propose a metric that could be used to quantify it.

For Module 4, consider your organization's mission and strategy from the perspective of its learning and growth (from your work on the case, your previous course work, and your background reading, you should be reasonably clear what such activities are). In this section of the assignment you'll begin to identify objectives and measures relevant to that perspective. Refer back to this presentation on objectives if you need to.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Once you're reasonably clear on what's involved, think about your organization and its learning and growth processes, and then:
- Identify at least three objectives for improving the organization's learning and growth, and show how they relate to the mission, vision and strategy of the organization.
- For each objective, develop at least one meaningful performance measure (metric).
- For each objective, identify at least one expected level of performance (target).
- For each objective, identify at least one new action or program that needs to be developed to ensure successful implementation of the organization's strategy (initiative).
- Comment briefly on the relationships of the learning and growth objectives that you've identified here to the financial objectives that you identified in the Module 1 SLP assignment, the customer service objectives you identified in Module 2, and/or the internal business process objectives you identified in Module 3. How do they help to fulfill those objectives? If they don't (and they don't have to), what makes them more important than objectives that would relate to customer service, business processes, or financial operations?
- Finally, do you wish to make any changes to your Module 1, 2, or 3 objective write-ups in light of your Module 4 experience?