Learning and Growth Perspective

The home page below 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 posting, choose another student's measure and propose a metric that could be used to quantify it.

HOME PAGE

In this module, we will be taking a look at how organizations utilize the process of strategy mapping in order to integrate their balanced scorecard efforts with organizational strategy. This is an important step in the BSC approach in that this process helps to determine if the strategic actions of the organization are in line with the organization's strategy as a whole. We'll look at several examples of organizations that have implemented the BSC approach and consider their strategy mapping efforts. In the next module, you will get an opportunity to apply the strategy mapping technique in your organization.

we still have one more internal perspective to consider. Module 4 brings us to learning and growth. In using a learning and growth perspective, organizations ask the question: "Can we continue to improve and create value?" This is perhaps the hardest one to fold one's mind around, being the most intangible, so it's best approached after some experience with the other perspectives. The graphic highlights where these questions fit into the whole model.

The learning and growth perspective focuses on capacities the organization must develop to create long-term growth and value. This perspective is unique among the four in having an orientation more toward the future, which is of course unknown and indeed unknowable, rather than toward a present that, while it may be unclear, is at least in principle determinable. These capacities include the ability to innovate, improve, and learn. And these capacities are important in order for any organization to succeed. An organization that is not learning and growing internally, and that is not providing opportunities for its employees to learn and grow as well, is not likely to survive in today's competitive world.

There are three main areas that encompass the learning and growth perspective:

• People

• Systems

• Organizational procedures
Robert Kaplan and David Norton (1996) suggest the following as measures:

• People
o Employee satisfaction
o Employee retention
o Employee training
o Employee skills

• Systems
o Real-time availability of accurate customer and internal process information to front-line employees
o Ability to launch new products
o Ability to create more value for customers
o Ability to penetrate new markets

• Organizational procedures
o Alignment of employee incentives with overall organizational success factors
o Rates of improvement in critical customer-based and internal processes

In this module, you'll look at how the balanced scorecard is utilized to assure the processes are in line with the organization's strategy.

Secondly, you'll look at how getting a handle on the firm's learning and growth processes completes the loop in implementing a balanced scorecard. You'll have a chance to apply the material relevant to people, systems, and organizational procedures.