Customer Reviews

Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step for Government and Nonprofit Agencies

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Although the Balanced Scorecard has taken over performance mangagement thinking in business, its linkages and adaptability to public and non-profit organizations has remained extremely challenging. I currently am resposible for leading planning and strategy development for a large social services provider in Canada. Being a strong proponent of Balanced Scorecard theory, I anxiously waited two months for Paul Niven's latest book to hit the shelves in hope that I could adapt the balanced scorecard approach to evaluate our organization's strategy. Long story short >> Balanced Scorecard for Government and Nonprofit Agencies was an incredible investment, and we are now on the way to better measuring and reporting on our organization's progress with the help of this book's advice, tips and proecess design steps.

Paul Niven's writing style provides a clear and informative description of the balanced scorecard approach to performance planning and measurement - and presents easy-to-follow steps for designing and implementing performance systems to monitor and evaluate the impact of nonprofit and public sector programs. I highly recommend this easy-to-read book to anyone interested in understanding how the world's leading approach to performance measurement and management can be successfully incorporated into your organization.

I've read most of the literature on the Balanced Scorecard and the previous books by Norton & Kaplan and Paul Niven himself. Being a Management Consultant of 15 years, I worked with numerous for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and have the usual skepticism towards theory books. This latest book on Balanced Scorecard was easy-to-read with numerous examples from Balanced Scorecard implementations in public sector. I found the step-by-step approach to be practical and quite down-to-earth with numerous take aways for a reader interested in BSC or a performance management practitioner, like myself. The book rightly touches upon the challenges in the scorecard implementations, and offers valuable advice. If you haven't read any previous books on this subject, you can read this book alone for a good idea on what the Balanced Scorecard is all about, and how you go about its implementation.

Niven is one of the best authors on BSC. If this administration and communications tool has been hailed as one the best new concepts in the business world, in nonprofit and government administration it can have even more impact. It is a great general introduction, but even seasoned experts will find enlightenment and a great very updated bibliography. Works very well as a textbook for nonprofit management with HBS cases.

Managers face competing interests in running a company. Their compensation programs are set to try and focus their performance, but if it is only set on revenue the company might end up losing money while paying the top executives big performance bonuses. If it is on net income, they can manipulate the accounting by cutting the heart out of future business, again, damaging the company while getting a big paycheck. If you put them on straight salary, you won't be able to hire most of the best talent. So, what do you do?

The Balanced Scorecard was originally created in the private sector to create management goals that, yes, balance a variety of factors. You use historical and industry data as well as current performance metrics. The interests of shareholders and stakeholders are also balanced in some way, as are any other combination of factors that can help managers get a better picture of what matters to the success of the company and the benefit of its owners, its employees, and its stakeholders.

This book takes this tool and shows you how to adapt it to public sector entities and nonprofit agencies. Paul Niven draws on his years of experience and shows you how to tweak the model and use it to increase your organization's effectiveness. He also takes us through the success story of Charlotte, North Carolina.

If you are interested in this model and are a governmental agency or a nonprofit organization, this is a fine resource.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Balanced Scorecards make lots of sense for the For-Profit world for which they were originally developed. What makes this book so good is that they have concentrated on what makes Non-Profits different and how to conceptualize how the BC works in that arena. The book is well written and easy to understand. It is a must for all non-profit execs.

This book is informative and keeps your interest. Lots of case studies and examples. The author keeps the focus on why scorecards should be used and places emphasis on how to keep them useful.

Very helpful approach in developing a measuring tool for monitoring ministry growth and tracking to Vision.

I didn't find the book helpfull as a guidline book.... it will never help you if you don't have the practical experience

This is a great book not only for those new to the Balanced Scorecard but also for those who have been practising it for a while.
I have about seven years experience implementing the Balanced scorecard and learnt a lot from reading this book, especially how to simplify the process.
Its very easy reading which gives you practical advice on how to implement the Balanced Scorecard.
A great addition to my reference library!

A very clear and practical view of the Balanced Scorecard tool. The text has the right amount of theoretical background and gives very enlightening exemples and advice to those interested in this field. However most of the exemples comes from private sector and non-profit organizations. Little from government and armed-forces.
But in general terms this is an excelent book. I recommend it.