Bible for Business Seminar#8 Resources & Balanced Scorecards

We covered two key topics in the seminar:

• Resources
• The Balanced Scorecard

Resources
As Christians, we can draw upon the special resources provided by God. We covered Prov 3:1-14 showing God's vision for us and the strategies to realize the vision:



We covered the process of learning as given in 2 Tim 3:16-17 Judging Rightly

1. Teaching-Doctrines: learn the truth and put into practice.
2. Reproof - when practicing it, there could be an error, so point out the error.
3. Correction - point out the right way to do.
4. Training in Righteousness - build up the right quality & standards of behavior and making them into good habits

Most people need training 1st before counseling. Or put in another way, so-called counseling is actually very time consuming and effort wasting training - it is training one on one.

Strategy Map Driven Balanced Scorecards
We covered the Strategy Map as the cause-effect business model of objectives across 4 or more perspectives. Each perspective is an earlier on view. Each objective must be related, with measures defined, and target set. When actual achievement is below the target, the strategic initiative will then be undertaken to close the gap. Such a method will ensure the focus and alignment of resources and people toward achieving the corporate vision. Focus means saying NO to everything else. Alignment means unity in purpose and actions. We use a budget airline example to illustrate the drawing of the Strategy Map and the setting up of balanced scorecards.

The Unified Corporate Performance Management Framework.
The various management methodology is unified and illustrated with the strategy map below:



The Biblical Basis for BSC

• Alignment – Concentrate All Energy towards Fruit, not Leaves
• The secret to fruitfulness is not adding more. It is pruning – channel the energy from growing leaves into growing fruit.
• Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. (John 15:2)
• Objective Driven
• “…Run in such a way that you may win. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:24, 26).
• Continual
• “…Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1).
• Focused
• “ but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:12-14)

The Gathering & Feedback
About 12 of us gathered together for the seminar. The overall rating is 90%. The highest scores of 96% go to Subject Area Coverage, Expectation Met, Knowledge of Speaker, Technical Level, and the lowest score is the length of talk 70%. I am surprised by the high score on the technical level as I was concerned whether the BSC topic is too in depth but the scoring put me at ease.

We have a good time sharing after the talk. We spoke about 2 main aspect of Corporate Performance - The Method, such as BSC and The People. Highly passionate and motivated staff needs to know the method to channel their efforts to achieve excellence. Just having passion without the right methods will result in fighting, activities without positive outcomes. Methods alone without passion will result in the achievement of minimum standards. Some other points are reflected in the feedback report below:

Like Best

1. Strategy Map & Scorecards
2. BSC
3. Prov 3:1-4 Teachings - completeness + God vision + Strategies for us
4. Less is more - 2 miracles in the Bible - Putting our faith in God + obey
5. We are no greater than our belief.
6. Scorecard
7. Introduction of the strategy map & balanced scorecard. Learned new things. It gives a guideline to running an organization, yet not confusing between the overall picture & profitability

Like Least

1. The ending seems a bit hasty, probably due to the shortage of time.

Others

1. Please give us the example of BSC
2. Maybe can change the seminar title to Bible for Success so that more people can attend and benefit