The Virtuous Garbage Cycle
Mihai Ionescu
Strategy Management technician. 20,000+ smart followers. For an example of a strong nation, look where European cities are bombed every day by Dark Ages savages. Slava Ukraini! ????
The information flows of those who follow Jeroen Kraaxhgzywjpxink are inundated on a daily basis by all sorts of eye-catching pseudo-science graphics produced by this Jack-of-All-Trades. By the way, I don't follow him, so I am shielded from his garbage spread.
I have written before about the danger to any business posed by this category of Masters of Superficiality who frequently chose to do their way with the Strategy Management domain.
Recently, someone mentioned to me another of this guy's widgets bearing his mark of incompetence, as he is now attempting to stain a Strategy Execution framework that has been adopted by (at least) tens of thousands of organizations worldwide: The Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard.
But let's see what has crossed the mind of this wannabe expert in Strategy.
The Claims of Incompetence
1. "Forget the Balanced Scorecard". Sure, let's follow the advice of an expert in everything and in nothing. I prefer to pass, because the advice comes from someone who is a complete ignorant about what Balanced Scorecard is and how it works. Wouldn't you?
2. "Dating back to the 1980s...". He is misinformed. Balanced Scorecard was born in 1992, when a famous Harvard Business Review article was published by Prof. Bob Kaplan and David Norton.
3. "... most widely used performance management tool". Our expert is 15 years late in finding out that the K-N Balanced Scorecard has evolved into a Strategy Execution framework. A mistake very common for superficialists like himself. He surely missed to read The Execution Premium, back in 2008.
4. "... it’s 2024 and time to move on". I agree, let's move on from the deluge of mumbo-jumbo, eye-catching garbage that Jeroen Kraaxhgzywjpxink throws at us, on a daily basis. Just unfollow the guy, as I did, long ago. Reading his stuff will only reduce the signal/noise ratio of your input, at least in what regards the Strategy Management. Put a stop to it, irrespective of how nicely designed and colored are his widgets.
5. "There’s a fifth, more important perspective that it omits". We are saved from ignorance! Well, not really. To contradict him, the Kaplan-Norton BSC framework doesn't mandate that the perspectives must always be the default ones. For instance, in public sectors implementations, the BSC perspectives are different. Furthermore, I have seen many implementations in which the perspectives are given different names and sometimes different meanings. And sometimes they are fewer or more than four.
6. "It is a linear hierarchical model". The Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard is a causal model, describing the cause-effect relationships within our Strategic Plan model. Not linear at all. Actually, the XPP (Execution Premium Process) diagram of the Balanced Scorecard framework is circular https://strategsys.com/xpp
7. "... with financial results as end point". Here, our expert is only three years late. The K-N Balanced Scorecard perspectives have changed since 2021. Read the Harvard Business Review article introducing the Triple-Bottom-Line revision of the BSC perspectives.
The Virtuous Garbage Cycle
Our Jack-of-All-Trades goes into creative mode, has decided to build a better mousetrap and announces us:
"I’ve developed the Virtuous Performance Cycle as an alternative for the BSC"
How can you develop an alternative to BSC if you are incapable to understand what Balanced Scorecard is and how it works?
1. "People & Culture Perspective". The Enablers perspective in the K-N BSC framework includes three intangible assets areas, including the Cultural Capital. Our Jeroen doesn't seem to know anything about this, therefore he tries to add something that already exists. Read more in this post that talks about the famous "Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" adage, in a BSC context.
2. "Offering & Competence Perspective". This a tragic mistake, not surprising, as it comes from a wannabe expert. It is embarrassing, at this level, to not really grasp what an offering is. In a strategic context, this is a Value Proposition, or a set of them, defining the Competitive Advantage, either the current one (that we are extending and defending), or a future one that we are developing and bringing to maturity. It's called Strategic Ambidexterity.
Competence, on the other hand, is an enabler, and not only for our Value Propositions' changes, but also for other relationships' and processes' changes mandated by the Strategy. Competence is part of the intangible assets that are targeted by the bottom BSC Enablers perspective, more specifically, by the Human Capital objectives. Of course, our Jeroen doesn't grasp any of these things, and that is why he proposes to bring "offering" and "competence" within the same perspective.
Furthermore, as he refers to "strong organizational competencies", we may suspect that he doesn't understand the difference between 'capabilities' and 'competences'.
3. "Growth & Presence Perspective". For our expert, 'growth' is a generic instance of "volume, scope, geography and revenues". So, we only get from him these four Strategic Choices typers that we ca select as alternatives for growing our business. As for what he defines as 'presence', should we expect that he should grasp concepts such as Strategic Positioning?
4. "Impact & Reward Perspective". Finally, our Jeroen invites us to consider a strategic perspective of "impact and reward", instead of the BSC Outcomes perspective, just because he fancies to reinvent the wheel and re-baptize it, claiming that each business should have an impact upon "the planet at large". Awkward, at least.
Hallmark of Incompetence
Continuing with his quest to replace something that he doesn't understand, this wannabe expert exhibits some more confusing ideas.
1. "The five perspectives are interrelated". Too bad that he doesn't understand the essential causality principle that guides the Balanced Scorecard framework. It is not surprising to see that he casually tries to replace it with a superficial "interrelated" surrogate, assessing that his wannabe perspectives "mutually affect each other". We are talking about causality instances like the driving-driven relationships between the Strategic Objectives, or the lead-lag relationships between output and outcome KPIs.
2. "When will you replace your Balanced Scorecard ...?" Well, someday maybe, but certainly not when "virtuous garbage cycles" are proposed by our Jeroen who rediscovers the warm water and suggests that his surrogate ideatic constructs are some sort of better mousetraps than leading Strategy frameworks that have been validated by decades of wide adoption in practice, worldwide.
A final recommendation, to protect your input signal/noise ratio from deprecation by compulsive 'innovators' who have nothing better to do all day than to spray our intelect with the junk output of their limited Strategy understanding:
Do yourself an intelectual favor and stop following this Jeroen Kraaxhgzywjpxink's pseudo-science posts!
Read other Strategy Clockwork newsletter issues:
These Strategy Management articles may interest you, as well:
There are also hundreds of Strategy Management posts available:
Founder and CEO: Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC; Expert in ABC, EPM/CPM, Profit Analysis, Budget, Analytics
9 个月Mihai ... I like your authored article above. It is well written and informative. Thanks. ... Keep in touch. ... Gary ... Gary Cokins
Federal Grants and Contracts Management Specialist| Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard Certified | Data Science, Business Analytics, and Machine Learning Enthusiast| Talks about Grants, Leadership, Strategy, and Finance
9 个月Mihai Ionescu you're very deep! Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you!!!
Sócio na Lure Consultoria | Coordenador estendido no IBGC | Diretor na ACIEG | Presidente do Conselho do Comitê de Empreendedorismo na AMCHAM Goiás
9 个月People are always looking for something new and exciting, and they often ignore solutions that have been tested and validated by thousands of companies and organizations. They think that innovation means doing something completely different, rather than improving what already works. They chase after the latest trends and fads, without considering the costs and risks involved. They miss out on the benefits of proven methods and best practices, which can help them achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively.