Strategy Map Template

Strategy Map of Kaplan and Norton

Many years ago, Kaplan and Norton created a template to map any strategy of an enterprise. Above, you see a strategy map example for this.

What is a Strategy Map?

A strategy map is a diagram used to document the primary strategic goals or objectives being pursued by an organization or management team.

Strategy maps show your organization's strategy in a single visualization. This diagram is great for communicating the big picture and the goals or objectives to everyone in the company.

If your strategy map is designed well, every employee can see and understand your overall strategy and where they fit in. This diagram helps to keep everyone on the same page, and it allows people to see how their work (or jobs) affects the company's strategic objectives.

If you are creating strategy maps and balanced scorecards on Dragon1, the strategy map you create, will also show how your organization is performing at a glance. Each oval in the diagram is automatically colored red, yellow, or green based on the actual measures and the goals you set for them.

A Quick Introduction

The main idea of a strategy map is that a shape, usually an oval, represents each strategic objective in your balanced scorecard. Very rarely are there more than 20 objectives. Too many objectives make your strategy harder to communicate.

The objectives (shaped as ovals) are then grouped into perspectives, such as Financial. Most organizations create strategy maps with four perspectives, similar to those shown here.

Within the perspectives are arrows. These arrows show the relationships and dependencies between the objectives. This allows you to do an impact of change analysis.

Do you know that you can sign up for a Trial Account? Or first, you can, as a consultant or architect, try the NEW DEMO for generating and creating a Strategy Map.