Personal scorecard: how BSC helps achieve personal goals

They say that something that can be measured can be improved. Performance evaluation systems have become extremely popular in various business areas. Planning and strategic vision are all important for any company that wants to succeed in the market and gain competitive advantage there. But any business is run by people who have their own preferences in life. 10 reasons why use personal Balanced Scorecard Of course, business goals are different as compared to personal goals. Life is so versatile and unpredictable. You never know what happens tomorrow, but still planning is important for those individuals striving to make their lives a complete success. At a first glance, it may seem ridiculously and even funny, but the concept of Balanced Scorecard can be easily applied in the area of personal planning and development. As already said above, every individual has different goals in different spheres of life. People have jobs, families, hobbies and friends. Naturally, every individual wants to make great achievements in life. At that, these achievements and improvements differ throughout different spheres of life.

Personal scorecard 4 perspectives The traditional Balanced Scorecard concept applied in business includes four categories (groups of indicators): financial, customer, internal processes, learning and growth. These four categories fully describe everything that happens to the company both in the internal and external environment. And what about personal goals? Every individual has to deal with finance, processes in his family and company he works for, personal development issues etc. Each category includes goals and. It goes without saying that all goals must be well integrated into the system of values and mission in life. Balance scorecard helps individuals set realistic goals and develop a system of measures evaluation of which will indicate success of failure in implementation of these goals. So, what are the four personal scorecard categories? Internal. This is about physical and mental state of an individual. It should be noted that the person mood and physical well-being influences his performance at work, as well as has the greatest impact on relations with colleagues and family. For example, the person who often false sick may be irritated and annoying which prevents him from completion of personal goals. In this category one should give an answer how to maintain good physical and mental conditions. The following personal performance measures in the internal category are most widely used: enthusiasm rate, work intensity, stress rate, stressed tolerance, job satisfaction, trust rate from boss, time when I felt good, job irritation rate, time spent for jogging, my weight, every sleep time, number of sports sessions a week, number of new tasks, frequency of uncontrolled emotion expression at work, cholesterol level in blood, intuition accuracy, percentage of time I felt full of energy, alcohol consumption, physical state, error rate at work, time spent for workand a number of others.

 External. Like any business or a company, an individual is living in the environment of other people: family members, colleagues, friends etc. it is important to know how all these people see you. If a person manages to be in harmony with internal and external environment he is more likely to reach goals and achieve success in everything he does. The following personal performance measures are widely used in external perspective:customer satisfaction, of time spent with children, time spent with family, how often I made donations, reliability of my services, how often I was praised by my wife, satisfaction rate of other people with my services, number of warnings from management, my availability rate, number of frank and pleasant conversations with my loved ones, participation in public organizations, how often I help other people, how often I go out with family, number of quarrels with my wife, number of people who think Im a good boss, how often I was praised for ethical conduct, how fast I answer emails, time spent with bosom friends, how many times my children ask for my advice etc. Knowledge and learning. Everything is simple here. An individual must develop his knowledge and skills no matter what he does in life. For example, IT engineer must learn new programming languages, while an artist should try new experimental arts and so on Such goals may be formulated in the following way: To read 10 new books by the end of the year etc. You may consider the following indicators in this category: number of areas Im competent in, ratio of completed learning tasks, number of music classes, number of books on management, hours spend that training courses, number of published articles, ratio of sales which became possible because of newly obtained knowledge, expenses for education, number of innovative ideas, number of spiritual books I read, time spent for reading and discussion and a number of others. Finance. Both poor and rich people have to deal with finances. It is imperative to know to what degree an individual fulfill his financial needs. Measures in this category may include number of timely paid bills or number of things which an individual planned to buy and did so. Of other indicators may include financial savings, deviation from budget in percents, ratio of revenue from new orders, savings account balance, number of late bills, debts rate, revenue growth, wages, bonuses, cash flow, pension, investment rate, money spent for charity, household expenses, hourly jobs rate etc.. Personal performance measures/indicators are those norms based and which one evaluates his progress towards implementation of personal goals. With the help of personal performance measures it is possible to evaluate own actions from the position of how you use own critical success factors and implement personal goals. Personal performance measures a criteria with the help of which one measures personal goals. Such indicators make personal vision and goals measurable. Without such indicators and without any tasks it would be difficult to perform self coaching, using feedback information. Personal performance measures stimulate for action in case they are related to relevant objectives. Based on the indicators it is possible to develop a certain course of actions. When you evaluate changes and compare obtained results with the norms, the indicators timely signals you about problematic areas, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. It is recommended to have no more than two indicators for each objective. When undergoing this stage of personal scorecard development your answer to questions: 1) how can I measure my personal results, and 2) what makes my personal goals measurable? It is obvious that BSC models for commercial organizations and personal scorecards look very much the same. The difference that in business BSC models interests of shareholders/business

owners are taken into account, while personal scorecards are focused on personal/individual ambitions. It also matters for what purpose personal scorecards are used. Often, HR specialists use them to align personal goals of employees with company goals and objectives. It is also important to mention that the above model has various forms and interpretations. For instance internal goals and measures may include personal and health goals, while financial category may have thing goals. In fact, the number of categories may exceed 4, depending on specific character of personal scorecard. In conclusion, it should be said that personal goals must always have realistic target and provide individuals with motivation. Only in such a way personal scorecard will really work. i

======================================================= 10 reasons to use personal scorecards

The concept of Balanced Scorecard is used not only in the area of commercial business, but it can be also applied to measure personal goals. Personal Balanced Scorecard is widely used by individuals who want to develop themselves and reach strategic goals in life. Personal scorecard motivates individuals, develops self discipline, tolerance etc. You can read about personal balanced scorecard, its four perspectives and examine a set of indicators at the following page, while this article focuses on top 10 reasons to use Balanced Scorecard for personal development. Reason #1 Personal Balanced Scorecard helps you distance from norms and beliefs instilled by education and upbringing, and listen to own inner voice. It also makes it possible to change own conduct and build own future. This can be achieved in two ways: 1) adjust external circumstances to personal goals and 2) change own perception of external circumstances so that they fit your personal goals. Both strategies are components of Personal Balanced Scorecard. Practice has shown that if an individual has clear personal goals he follows them in his life. As a result, he becomes a dedicated and resolute individual. Personal goals include different tasks, objectives and ethical norms which add sense to your actions. Having formulated own Personal Balanced Scorecard and having worked on it, youll better understand your life and yourself, which in its turn will result in improvement of your self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is your inner voice which reacts on everything happening to you nervous system (inner world) and to everything that surrounds you (external circumstances). They say that in order to change a person it is necessary to change his self-consciousness. Experience proves that individual coaching with personal Balanced Scorecard enables people to get the right concept about themselves and find their true ego. Personal Balanced Scorecard offers stimulus for development and self improvement, it makes it possible to broaden horizons and improve mood. Reason#2 Self-knowledge and self education based on Personal Balanced Scorecard will make it possible for you to work in a more efficient way, instead of working intensely. Having studied your inner world, your

character, spiritual processes and motives, you become more creative. When you better understand your life your ability for education will improve. You will gain inner harmony which will make it possible to change own conduct and get rid of bad habits. Personal changes and improvements will inevitably result in organization changes. If company wants to develop its employees the top management should better learn themselves. The recent surveys have shown that many European managers have the wrong concept of own inner world. Subconsciously, they negatively affect personnel of their companies. About half of European employees have changed job at least once because of their bosses conduct. Use of Personal Balanced Scorecard will help employees understand what it means to be a person. Thanks to such education we rebuild our characters and gain skills that we thought we would never gain. Such education helps develop creative side of our characters and ability to create rather than destroy. If you will regularly use Personal Balanced Scorecard, obtained knowledge will make you wiser. We admire people who achieved great success in life, and think they are exception from the rules. But everyone can develop own skills, as we already have everything to succeed. We only have to make the right use of own knowledge and skills. We have to win the war against own laziness, superstitions etc. Effective job implies well balanced work of left and right brain cerebral hemispheres. You can achieve that with Personal Balanced Scorecard. Most of us use only left cerebral hemispheres, while enormous potential of the right one remains unused. Reason #3 Conformity of your conduct and your goals will make it possible to gain peace with yourself, make fewer efforts and listen to your inner voice. All this will make your charisma more attractive. Those who succeeded in it are respected and trusted by friends, colleagues and family. Moreover, youll be able to make people who surround you dedicated to work. Reason #4 Use of personal scorecards is very profitable for companies and organizations. Harmony between interests of individual employees and organizations interests results in higher performance of personnel. The secret is personal motivation which makes any job enjoyable for an employee. Personal and organization goals are formed simultaneously. When we ask ourselves what we want for the company and where we want to drive at, we also ask what we want to achieve for ourselves and under what circumstances. Completion of our personal goals automatically mean implementation of company strategic goals. Personal Balanced Scorecard makes it possible to bridge the gap between work and private life. There are employees who hope that their job will help them find new friends, new ways of entertainment and rest. Many employees treat their colleagues as family members. There is a necessity to re-educate top managers and restore ties of their job with the normal life. There has always been a great difference between how people treat colleagues and their friends/family members. When were talking to friends and family members we do not view friendship and tolerance as sentiments. Moreover, we think that friendship and tolerance are necessary to maintain good relations. Why not use the same approach in our business life? Reason #5 Having integrated Personal Balanced Scorecard to the training and education process and having unified it with the Organization Balanced Scorecard, it is possible to improve talent retention and human resource management. Employees should always set new tasks for themselves and obtain knowledge necessary to implement these tasks. As a result, learning and education process will not become a fiction as it often happens in many companies. Integration of personal Balanced Scorecard into this process will make talent management more effective, which will increase employee roles in it.

Machines and computers do not make any company successful, but people do. Thats why no theory or plan will bring the company success, compared to how company employees can benefit it. This is a core principle of human resource management nowadays. And recent economic crisis proved this statement companies with great intellectual potential managed to survive and even gain competitive advantage. Reason #6 Personal Balanced Scorecard stimulates education in teams. When employees share their goals and viewpoints they begin to the value and understand each other which results in improvement of respectful and reliable relations. Regular use of personal Balanced Scorecard results in the lifestyle characterized by freedom. An individual pays attention to self discipline only when he feels free, and only self discipline promotes true personal development. If an individual feels free in a certain area, this encourages him to look for freedom in other spheres of life. Freedom implies responsibility and freedom intensifies it. If an individual is offered carte blanche (freedom of actions) he will be able (and moreover you will be eager) to assume responsibility. The freedom of choice and the freedom of decision-making can do magic. Reason #7 Personal Balanced Scorecard will help effectively use and manage own time by performing everything according to the plan. Personal Balanced Scorecard is an action plan on implementation of your most important personal goals which represent your priorities. It will help you become muster of your time. If something unpleasant happens or someone attempts you to change the course, youll quickly restore the chosen path, being aware that you are going in the right direction, set by personal Balanced Scorecard. Time management is especially important for organization discipline. Very often employees receive poor performance results just because they cannot efficiently manage their time, but not because they are incompetent. Reason #8 Personal Balanced Scorecard will help employees get rid of fear to discuss their personal goals with their bosses and top management. Ordinary employees have from time to time to discuss their personal goals and personal Balanced Scorecards with managers. It goes without saying that such talks should be held in private, and they should be 100% confidential. Employees should feel that they are valued and respected. If an employee really feels that he is treated like a person but not like a small element in the business mechanism he will have additional motivation to show high performance. This creates an atmosphere of trust and mutual respect which is necessary for personal growth and development of creative skills. In general, positive organization climate has a direct impact on company and individual employee performance. Reason #9 Personal Balanced Scorecard is a great tool to decrease stress and avoid physical and nervous exhaustion of employees by harmonizing their personal goals with strategic goals of organization. The stress experienced by employees at work is defined as negative physical and emotional reaction which appears when employees face requirements which do not meed their demands, capabilities and skills. Physical and nervous exhaustion is physical, mental and emotional reaction on a regular stress. Physical and nervous exhaustion creates feelings of despair, importance, non-satisfaction, cynicism, offense, expectancy of failure which surely results in low performance. Surveys have shown that employees having strained relations with management are more likely to experience severe stresses. Regular use of personal Balanced Scorecard restores interest to job and harmony in labor relations, as well as decreases stress and helps avoid physical and nervous exhaustion. It is not a secret that employees show their best performance only when they believe in something they do or have a keen interest in the job. By the way, lets not forget that a good mood decreases the risk of heart attack. In other words, personal Balanced

Scorecard helps find harmony own inner world and external environment. Reason #10 Personal Balanced Scorecard helps human resource managers find a perfect candidate for a certain position. Personal scorecard shows conformity of candidates abilities, motivation and skills to position requirements and company goals. Personal goals of the candidate characterize him in a more complete way, as compared to a resume. It often happens that a person is perfect for a certain position, judging from his resume and biography, but his personal goals conflict with company goals. If personal goals are well integrated in the system of strategic goals and position requirements, this will help improve customer satisfaction. Recruitment of personnel is especially important now as headhunting is so much popular. The right choice of personnel is a remarkable success factor for any business. Thats why dont waste your time for trying traditional and barely effective methods of self improvement. Instead of complaining, start using personal Balanced Scorecard with its unlimited opportunities for personal growth and improvement of organization climate. Summary Personal Balanced Scorecard makes it possible to reformulate your personal goals, objectives, principals, norms and moral values, and then make your family, friends and colleagues familiar with them (in fact, all people whose opinion is important to you). If organization takes into account personal goals and objectives of employees, it turns from from enslaving machine into a mechanism for their selfactualization. Some all school managers think that if they let employees express their personal goals this will result in anarchy and chaos in the company. However, these fears have nothing to do with reality, and most employees sincerely wish to align their personal goals with the company strategy. If you want to improve relations with your environment, start with yourself. If you want to achieve success in the external world, first succeed in your private life! Before promising anything to anyone, learn to keep your own word. At a first glance, Balanced Scorecard can be hardly used to implement individual goals. Some people think that this system turns human beings into machines. Indeed, it is quite weird to count number of quarrels with your wife and amount of consumed alcohol. However, in course of time use of personal Balanced Scorecard will become an inseparable procedure of your daily routine. Moreover, when you start enjoying first results you will never regret you started your own personal Balanced Scorecard. If this system works for best businesses in the world, why wouldnt it work for you?