Acronym

January, it seems, is the classic time for leadership publications. ASAE & the Center publish their respected Volunteer Leadership issue each January. I generally order extra copies each year for our Board of Governors and Senior Vice Presidents.

I’ve posted twice this month about business operations and technology, because I think it’s important to recognize that successful business operations are a major key to achieve the results and tangible success we desire for our organizations. If you’re interested in operations, as I am, then another good January resource is the January Harvard Business Review “Leadership & Strategy for the 21st Century” issue.

Although written for business, there are many topics equally useful for associations, with features this January such as “Putting Leadership Back Into Strategy”, “Mastering the Management System”, Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy” and the compelling “Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things”. Departmental comments in the issue deal with “Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World” and “Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Leaders”—topics that are as common to the non-profit world as the for-profit.

I am a strong advocate of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a tool to identify strategy and successfully link it with operations, enabling an organization to successfully cascade strategy throughout the organization’s operations, using metrics and key initiatives. Using the BSC, it is even possible to embed strategy in annual performance planning and evaluation for staff and volunteers—which we are doing. “Mastering the Management System” by Kaplan and Norton, the Harvard Business School professors who are the founders and developers of the Balanced Scorecard, is an important read for those of us looking for ways to better connect strategy with operations.

“Successful strategy execution has two basic rules: understand the management cycle that links strategy and operations, and know what tools to apply at each stage of the cycle”, say the authors, Norton and Kaplan They go on to present thoughts on how closed loop management systems link strategy and operations, a management system tool kit, mapping strategic themes, and an example of how to organize your management meetings to be effective. Want to think about improving your operations this year? After reading Associations Now, check out the January HBR issue.