The second section of the Handbook deals with stewardship through control: once you’ve set the direction, your next role is to gain reasonable confidence (assurance) in the performance of the School Board, including performance monitoring, risk oversight and stakeholder engagement.
Linking Strategic Planning, Risk and Performance Targets [1]
It is said that what gets measured gets done. Creating a strategic plan is just the first stage of achieving results. A plan is merely an intention to act, real action must then take place, and you need to have a way to be confident that these intentions are being realized.
Measuring results is how we track progress towards our goals and objectives. Once strategies have been determined, measures of their success should be set. Targets should be set, agreed upon and communicated to those responsible for delivery of the strategy to ensure the measure is understood and met.
Balanced Scorecard [2]
Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a tool that links strategic objectives to performance measures, targets and initiatives. It is both a planning tool and a monitoring tool.
Using the BSC, you focus on the 10-12 most important performance measures (KPIs) from a strategic perspective – this keeps you, the board, focused on high level strategic outcomes/ results that really matter when you are overseeing the school board’s and Director’s performance.
You can use the BSC as a tool to assist your School Division to develop effective strategies. Performance goes beyond a single area – like student or financial – to include multiple perspectives across the school board – that’s why it’s called “balanced”.
The BSC typically measures performance in four high-level goal areas:
- Students (Stakeholders, or Customers): this perspective is at the pinnacle of strategy for public sector and not-for-profit organizations like school boards. It answers the question “to achieve our vision, what must we accomplish for our stakeholders (students)?”
- Process: In order to deliver the Student objectives, you need effective processes. It answers the question “to satisfy our customers (students), at which operational processes must we excel?”
- People (Learning and Growth): This acknowledges the importance of the school board’s people and their growth, by setting tangible objectives for them. It answers the question “how will we sustain our ability to change and improve?” This considers core competencies, skills, technologies and culture needed to support strategy.
- Financial: this considers the financial strategy of the school board. It answers the question “to financially sustain our mission, what must we focus on?” This encourages the identification of a few relevant high level financial measures.
In a nutshell, then, BSC helps you answer how money (budget/resources) will pay for the people who will use process to meet the needs of our customers (students).
The value of the BSC lies in the School Board’s ability to learn from its feedback, to change and develop accordingly, to test new possibilities and to gradually increase your understanding of the linkage among student expectations, business processes, people and financial resources, and growth for continued organizational success. Here is a simplified example of what a balanced scorecard might look like.
[1] Much of the content of this section is drawn from SSBA’s comprehensive Performance Management Framework to guide School Boards in this area:
http://saskschoolboards.ca/wp-content/uploads/SSBA-Perf-Mgmt-Framework.pdf
[2] Balanced Scorecard was developed by, and is a trademark of, Kaplan and Norton.