The Virtuous Garbage Cycle

The Virtuous Garbage Cycle

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:

Explaining Strategy

A Course to Remember

Modeling Strategy

Why the Crusade on Strategy Execution?

The Strategic Alignment

Strategy Skunk Works

Don't Rely on a Single Strategy!

Without a Plan, Strategy is a Fairytale

Design Thinking inside Strategy

Beyond [static] Balanced Scorecard

The Deeply Integrated Strategy

The Game inside Strategy

The Balance of Strategic Choices

The Corporate Balanced Scorecard

The Strategy Clockwork Newsletter


These Strategy Management articles may interest you, as well:

The Resilience Dimension

Strategy for Left-Brainers

The Strategy Elevator Pitch

Strategic Objectives? Not S.M.A.R.T.

Managing Strategy: Simple or Complex?

Strategically Preparing for Downturn

KPI Targets and the Value Gaps Tree

Matrices in Strategy Execution

What Strategic Choices Do We Have? (Penta Model)

Linking Jobs-to-Be-Done to Strategy

Cumulative vs. Disruptive Advantage

Where do our Strategic Objectives come from?

The Chains of Strategic Hypotheses

The Adaptive Strategy System

Strategy's Feasibility Validation

Why Strategy is Not What They Think

The Strategy Dialogue

Balanced Scorecard Quick Wins

The Strategic Horizon

The Strategy Terminology Map

Who Needs Frameworks?

Strategy and the Business Models

The Competitive Advantage Cycle

Strategic Objective's Status. How to calculate It?

Strategic Choices vs. Strategy Models

Strategic Performance and Risk Integration

Deseasonalization of Strategic KPI Measures

Misunderstanding the Capabilities-Driven Strategy

Alignment & Cascading. Which are Our Choices?

Balanced Scorecard Dynamics


There are also hundreds of Strategy Management posts available:

Strategy Management Posts I (1-400)

Strategy Management Posts II (401-480)

Strategy Management Posts III (480- ...)

Gary Cokins

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

??enjamin Kofi Quansah, CMA, CGBA, CGMS, MBA

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!!!

Ronaldo Guedes

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.

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Mihai Ionescu的更多文章

  • Explaining Strategy

    Explaining Strategy

    FOR YOUR 2025+ STRATEGY & STRATEGIC PLAN The September 2024 edition of the Explaining Strategy course is the best…

    2 条评论
  • The Strategy Practice Blueprint

    The Strategy Practice Blueprint

    I am talking in this article about the live, online, hands-on Strategy practice that we perform during the May-June…

    1 条评论
  • Explaining Strategy

    Explaining Strategy

    The Strategy is not simple. To manage it, we need a simplifying model.

    1 条评论
  • Strategy Management Posts III

    Strategy Management Posts III

    ? SECOND SECTION (Strategy Management Posts II, posts 400-480) When I get questions in my area of expertise (Strategy…

    4 条评论
  • A Course to Remember

    A Course to Remember

    The first edition of this live, practice-focused course about Strategy, on Jan-Feb this year, was an extraordinary…

    11 条评论
  • Modeling Strategy

    Modeling Strategy

    Although the Strategy Management process is based on simple principles and theories, its methodology workflow is as…

    15 条评论
  • Crusade on Strategy Execution

    Crusade on Strategy Execution

    There is a crusade built agains the Strategy Execution. Why? Let's see .

    1 条评论
  • Open Letter to Prof. Roger Martin

    Open Letter to Prof. Roger Martin

    Dear Prof. Roger Martin, I have read with interest your "Open Letter to Mihai Ionescu", an act of gross and…

    13 条评论
  • The Strategic Alignment

    The Strategic Alignment

    Business people have used the term cascading for a long time, and it is still often used today. But when we are talking…

    11 条评论
  • Strategy Management Posts II

    Strategy Management Posts II

    ? FIRST SECTION (Strategy Management Posts I, posts 1-400) When I get questions in my area of expertise (Strategy…

    6 条评论

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了