Strategic Performance Management Leveraging and Measuring Your Intangible Value Drivers
Bernard Marr
A practical guide to designing and running Strategic Performance Management by mapping tangible and intangible value drivers, building meaningful indicators, and using them in an enabled learning environment rather than a command-and-control regime.
Bernard Marr argues that most organizations fail at performance management because they fall into three traps: an incomplete, one-sided view of strategy; measuring what is easy rather than what matters; and using measures to control people like machines. Strategic Performance Management offers an integrated alternative that unites market-based and resource-based strategic analysis into a 'value creation map' and 'value narrative,' then guides readers to design relevant performance indicators (not just measures), and to embed them in an 'enabled learning environment' where indicators inform learning, dialogue, and better strategic decisions. Rich with real-world case studies (DHL, Novo Nordisk, Fujitsu, Shell, TT Club, the UK Home Office) and templates for identifying value drivers, designing indicators, assessing risk, and evaluating mergers, the book shows how to move from management-by-numbers to management-by-insights and make strategy everyone's everyday job.
The model it argues
A causal framework in which strategic clarity (value creation mapping) and design levers (relevant indicators, enabled learning environment) shape psychological and behavioral states (shared understanding, trust, learning behaviour) that drive organizational outcomes (better decisions, value delivery, sustained performance), while resource architecture underpins core competencies and the stakeholder value proposition.
Key ideas
- Value Creation Mapping
- The practice of visualizing and narrating organizational strategy by linking the stakeholder value proposition, core competencies, and underlying tangible and intangible resources into one shared business model.
- Intangible Resource Base
- The stock of human, structural, and relational non-physical value drivers attributed to the organization that support its competencies.
- Core Competencies
- Distinctive, hard-to-imitate combinations of resources and capabilities central to strategy and linked to the value proposition.
- Relevant Performance Indicators
- Meaningful indicators aligned to strategic elements that indicate performance levels and enable challenging of strategic assumptions.
- Command-and-Control Orientation
- A managerial climate that uses measures to control, reward, and punish, emphasizing compliance and blame over learning.
- Enabled Learning Environment
- A social context of trust, common purpose, and empowerment in which people seek insights, dialogue, and are enabled to act.
- Shared Strategic Understanding
- The extent to which employees hold a common, explicit understanding of strategy and how they contribute to it.
- Organizational Learning Behaviour
- The behavioral pattern of using indicators to reflect, question, and validate assumptions via single- and double-loop learning rather than gaming measures.