Why the Cascade Scorecard is the Preferred Managerial Tool

Let is face it – even if you have the most efficient and the most impressively designed balanced scorecard in the house, it still would not be as effective as you would want it to be without the proper communication channels in place. This is because the strategies that comprise your scorecard should be communicated to all of your employees in a clear manner. Any company’s success is largely dependent on how the employees understand and perceive corporate goals and objectives – as well as the methods that have been developed to achieve all of these. If the employees do not fully comprehend the gravity of the situation at hand, especially the importance of achieving these goals and objectives, then this could present a serious problem. More importantly, if the employees are unable to comprehend fully just what exactly they should do to achieve such goals and objectives, then there really is no use of developing and implementing the scorecard in the first place. Thus, it would be better to use the cascade scorecard instead.

When you have made the vital decision to develop a balanced scorecard for your company, then there is a need to focus on organizational alignment as well. This is because it is important to align all of the metrics, KPIs or key performance indicators, and measures that you will be using in your scorecard. Really, it all boils down to alignment, so as to ensure that all information needed to achieve all goals and objectives would be disseminated clearly.

Let us use the typical scenario of the call center and see how the balanced scorecard is used here. The agents themselves would be the ones that come in first contact with the customers. Thus, they would be the firsthand employees in this example. They would then need to check out KPIs and metrics that gauge their own performance, especially when it concerns how they handle their calls and the issues of their customers. Meanwhile, the team managers of these agents would be checking out metrics that gauge the overall performance of their respective teams. Account managers, on the other hand, would check the performance of accounts that they handle in whole.

But when you use the cascade type of scorecard, you actually have the tool broken down into a few units. The topmost level is then referred as Tier 1. Translating down to lower levels, you would then have Tier 2, Tier 3, and so on. There would then be much needed focus across all of the existing organizational levels.

Through the act of cascading your scorecard downward as well as across your business units, functional areas, and management groups, all objectives would then be translated clearly. Usually, these objectives come in the form of verb-noun goal sentences. But when you use the cascade scorecard, these sentences, which would not really be interpreted in the same way by a rank and file employee and a department manager, would then be translated accordingly. This means the objectives would be made more relevant across all department levels and units. If you think about it, this is really a practical thing to do.