How to Develop a Strategy Map

A strategy map is a diagram of a company's strategy

A strategy map is a one-page visual representation of a company's strategy, developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton in 2001. It is basically a diagram that describes how an organization creates value by linking strategic objectives in causal relationships.Strategic objectives are catagorized into four groups or perspectives: financial perspective, customer perspective, internal (business) process perspective, and learning and growth perspective.

Instructions

1. Identify the factors influencing your business. They can include your customers, suppliers, business processes, regulatory systems, taxes, employees, and many other things your business depends on. Think in which way they affect your business and each other.

2. Divide the factors influencing your organization into four perspectives: financial perspective (return on capital, margins), customer perspective (what your customers are concerned with, e.g. quality, price), internal (business) process perspective (operational issues), and learning and growth perspective (human, organizational and information capital).

3. Set your concrete objectives in every of the four perspectives, link them, and draw the strategy map of your firm. What your company wants to achieve? How to achieve it? Remember that you need to connect the objectives with causal links, i.e. indicate how objectives from different perspectives influence one another. If you do everything right, you will get a clear visualized strategy map of your organization.

References

• Valuebasedmanagement.net: Strategy maps - Kaplan Norton