The major challenge of running today’s business is the fact that although nearly everyone realises and acknowledges that the human resource is the greatest asset that any organisation can possess and investments have been made into technology that will help harness this resource, a number of managers are still using old traditional methods of management to manage today’s human resource.  In an information era, where you can literally access information on any subject within seconds, companies in Zambia are hardly using information communication technologies to maximise the utilisation of human and other resources.   The resultant effect of this is that more time is taken to process information.  Organisations, especially large ones are becoming  more and more bureaucratic.  Instead of creating a paperless office, more and more papers are being created.  While a huge chuck of organisational budgets is going into ICT investment, less is being spent on employee learning/training and growth.  Even in organisations where new technologies are invested into, the people who are supposed to employ the technology in their work are hardly being trained.  They are expected to simply fit in and adopt to new systems and processes with hardly any training.    Managers need to look at their organisations and challenges they face in achieving objectives and design ways to enhance performance.

The tendency by Zambian managers to dismiss concepts that sound foreign to them, as foreign ideologies should be discouraged.  There is usually some level of excitement with seemingly new or ‘foreign’ themes but sooner or later the excitement dies down and everyone goes back to business as usual.  It is amazing to see the number of people who are exposed to training in certain organisations both locally and internationally, but who do nothing to implement what they have learnt.   Terms such as Performance Management , Total Quality Management, Just In Time, Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard are not new to a good number of management teams in Zambia but it is the failure to implement them that is both perplexing and disappointing.

One of the hallmarks of leading-edge organisations - be they public or private - has been the successful application of performance measurement to gain insight into, and make judgements about, the organisation, and the effectiveness and efficiency of its programmes, processes, and people. The balanced scorecard is a widely used management framework for the measurement of organisational performance. The Balanced Scorecard concept suggests that the state of processes of an organisation can be best assessed by taking a "balanced" view across a range of performance measures.
The Balanced Scorecard was developed in the early 1990s by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, to provide a new form of strategic management. The key features of the Balanced Scorecard approach are that it:

•    has a limited number of measurements
•    focuses on the important factors for strategic success
•    is not overly complex
•    does not confuse, or diffuse focus, by containing too many objectives or too much information
•    is broad-ranging (including strategy, customers, financial management, business processes and learning/development)
•    relates the diverse areas together in a dynamic relationship

Robert S. Kaplan is a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School.
The balanced scorecard provides a simple but effective answer to the questions "what does the organisation need to do to succeed?" and "how can we get every employee working in the same direction?"

Balanced scorecard and organisational teamwork
The Balanced Scorecard can play a key role in achieving real change in organisational teamwork. Although team/organisational performance is dependent on many things, a major part is played by:

•    the degree of collective focus on the overall goal
•    simplicity of that goal
•    clarity of visible measurement of that goal
•    speed of communication of measurement results

These principles makes it easier, for example, for sports teams to build a performance culture than many businesses, because:
•    the goals of sports teams are very clear (eg: to win the league)
•    measurement is simple, both in the short term (by goals scored) or long term (by position in the table)
•    communication of progress to organisational members, and their supporters, is clear and instant (everyone sees when a goal is scored, or the team wins a match, and the updated tables are reported within minutes of each match finishing)
The difficulties faced by business
It is often difficult to improve overall organisational performance in a business because the collective goals are unclear. Employees are often only aware of the aims of their own "team island", and regard other team islands as having a different job. Individuals are often motivated to "do their bit", but they lack the overall understanding of where the organisation is going or how the various team islands are supposed to work together for collective good. Whereas a sports team is often characterised by a focus on goals, results and league tables, businesses are often characterised by an absence of such a unifying force.
The role of Balanced Scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard can help overcome such difficulties by providing a focus that unifies all parts of the business. It provides a methodology that turns the eyes of all employees to a single direction. The Balanced Scorecard can therefore be a very effective tool for changing the organisational culture, breaking down the barriers between team islands, creating an overall team culture and thereby improving organisational performance.
The balanced scorecard focuses on the measures that drive the employee performance. The balanced scorecard provides a list of measures that balance the organizations internal and process measures with results, achievements and financial measures. The two basic features of the balanced scorecard are:
•  A balanced set of measures based on. the four perspectives of  balanced scorecard
•  Linking the measures to Employee Performance

A balanced set of measures

Instead of relying on just one instrument or measure, using a balanced set of measures ensures that all the aspects of the employees’ performance are covered and provide relevant support for the decisions taken.


Therefore, it is necessary that the manager should be capable of observing and noting the several instruments and measures simultaneously. The four perspectives given by Kaplan and Norton are the financial measures, the customer’s perspective, the internal business perspectives and the innovation and learning perspectives.

For each perspective of the following things are measured:
•    Objectives: the goals and the targets to be achieved
•    Measures: the standards which will be used to measure the actual performance and the progress.
•    Action plans: the initiatives taken and the course of action to be followed to achieve the objectives
Tie-In to Employee Performance

The balanced scorecard approach can be used and applied at both the individual and the organisational level. It provides a balanced approach to evaluate the employees’ performance (for the purpose of Performance appraisal) in a comprehensive manner rather than a partial view. In most of the organisations, the common practice of measuring the employee performance refers to only the comparison of their action plans and behaviours with the standards set i.e. without actually measuring the results of their actions like profits and increase in market share. This conventional practice can lead to the appraisal of most of the employees without any or little progress towards achieving the goals and objectives of the organisation. Thus, the balanced scorecard gives the complete view of the employees and the organisational performance and helps to align the employee performance/action plans with the organisational goals.
BENEFITS OF BALANCED SCORECARD

The benefits of the balanced scorecard approach in measuring performance are:
•    Gives the complete picture of the employee as well as the organisational performance.
•    It guides users in determining the critical success factors and performance indicators.
•    Strategic review or analysis of the organisational capabilities and performance.
•    Focusing the whole organisation on the few key things needed to create breakthrough performance.
•    Integrating and directing the performance and efforts from the lowest levels in the organisation to achieve excellent overall performance.
Improvement of organizational performance will ultimately lead to total customer satisfaction.