Balanced Scorecard: The Comprehensive Guide

A complete balanced scorecard example, with objectives, measures and initiatives for each perspective

Here is a complete balanced scorecard for a council-manager city of about 38,000 residents. Each of the four perspectives holds two objectives. Every objective carries one measure, a baseline, a one-year target, the initiative that moves it, a due date and a named owner. A hospital and a university version follow, and the whole workbook downloads free.

Illustrative example for FY2027 (July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027). The city, the owners and the figures are fictional. Jump to the hospital, the university, the download or the FAQ.

The strategy map behind this scorecard

Read the map from the bottom up. Money and people sit at the base. They feed two processes, street repair and emergency response, and those two processes move what residents feel. Every arrow is a bet you can check: if P1 improves and R1 doesn't move, the arrow was wrong, and the quarterly review should say so.

Founded in 2008 by Ted Jackson and Dylan Miyake, who worked with Robert Kaplan and David Norton — the creators of the Balanced Scorecard — and have worked in strategy execution since 1999.

Prefer a company example? The classic one below follows a hypothetical airline through its strategy map, bubble by bubble.

An Exhaustive Balanced Scorecard Example: Upward Airlines

Let’s look at the details of a Balanced Scorecard, starting with strategy maps.

To build it instead of downloading a file, use the free balanced scorecard template. It works in the browser with no account, and asks for email only if you want to export.

What is A Strategy Map?

A strategy map shows your strategy for everyone to see. It is a one-page graphic that lays out your strategic objectives so you can communicate your vision to your team. A Balanced Scorecard is more than just a strategy map, but mapping allows you to put your strategy on one page in a “language” everyone can understand.

Reading A Strategy Map

For this example, we’re going to look at Upward Airlines, a hypothetical airline loosely based on Southwest Airlines’ strategy in the early 2000s.

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First, notice the vertical text on the left side of the strategy map. These are the four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard: Financial, Customer, Internal, and L&G (Learning & Growth). These perspectives make the BSC unique, because traditional reporting frameworks typically only look at the financial perspective.

The 15 bubbles you’re looking at are Upward Airlines’ objectives, each filed under one of the four perspectives. Strategy maps are read from top to bottom. The objectives are listed in order of importance. So, you’ll notice that the top goal of Upward is its financial goal, which is Increase Shareholder Value.

Beneath the financial perspective is the customer perspective. This is because Upward leaders believe that the way they’re going to meet their number one goal of increasing shareholder value is by making their customers happy. Very Low Ticket Prices and Frequent Reliable Departures make customers happy. The cost and experience need to be Comparable To Other Travel, like cars, trains, or buses.

They also know that to meet financial goals and make customers happy, they need to focus on Innovation by offering Fast Ground Turnaround, Good Locations that better serve their customers, and Direct Routes to big cities. They’ll build good relationships by creating Fun Experiences where everyone is treated well, and emphasize No Elites, because they believe all their passengers are equals.

Finally, they’ll focus on Cost Effectiveness strategies such as No Frills, Standard Fleet, and High Utilization. By not offering fancy upgrades, keeping the planes simple, and filling the flights completely, they’re able to offer affordable flights. To execute all of this, Upward looks at its final perspective, which is Learning and Growth. They believe in offering High Compensation, Flexible Union Contracts, and want to achieve High Employee Ownership of the company.

Each of these perspectives directly relates to the next, offering a ground-up approach to strategy management.

What Is A Balanced Scorecard (BSC)?

To back up a bit from that example, let’s define Balanced Scorecard, often abbreviated as “BSC.” It is a strategy management framework that includes four perspectives of your strategy: Financial, Customer, Internal Process, and Learning and Growth.

Definition Cheat Sheet

• Objectives are high-level, strategic organizational goals. A very general example would be: “Become an internationally recognized brand.” The typical BSC has 10-15 strategic objectives.
• Measures help you understand if you’re accomplishing your objectives strategically. Your measures might change, but your objectives will remain the same. You might have 1-2 measures per objective, so you are aiming to come up with 15-25 measures at the enterprise level of your strategy.
• Initiatives are key action programs developed to achieve your objectives. You’ll see initiatives referred to as “projects,” “actions,” or “activities outside of the Balanced Scorecard.” Most organizations will have 0-2 initiatives underway for every objective (with a total of 5-15 strategic initiatives).
• Action items are small jobs that move you toward completing your initiatives. These items typically arise from review meetings and are tasks delegated to one person or a small team. They are technically not part of the BSC framework, but are part of the management process as a whole.

Why Build A Balanced Scorecard?

The Balanced Scorecard enables you to break goals into measures, measures into projects, and projects into action items. Measures should always tie back to goals, giving you direct feedback around how you’re doing. By aligning actions with strategy and measuring their outcomes, you learn how your strategy is performing.

Comparing it to other frameworks (even the new, trendy ones), the Balanced Scorecard remains a compelling choice after all these years because it...

Allows you to look both backward and forward

The BSC requires using a management system that combines backward and forward-looking measures (with lagging and leading indicators). The system shows today’s performance, predicts tomorrow’s, and demonstrates how your spending on strategic projects today will help improve your impact in the future. The Balanced Scorecard is the closest management tool to a crystal ball as you will find.

Offers a holistic view of your business

The Balanced Scorecard goes beyond short-term financial measures to predict performance. Its four perspectives give leaders a balanced, big-picture view of all the elements that impact success. It forces you to think about your organization from a financial perspective, as well as that of your customers, operations, and staff. Some of these factors can be ignored with other approaches.

Nothing about the OKR framework, for example, forces you to take a balanced view of strategy. Your OKRs could all be tied to finances or operations. Having the Balanced Scorecard’s mixture of performance metrics helps managers and decision-makers understand the trade-offs they’re making as part of long-term, strategic decisions.

Is (likely) familiar to your people

Having been around for more than 30 years, the Balanced Scorecard is familiar to most high-level business executives. Many people have used it and understand its concepts. There are also plenty of resources available if you need them.

Adapts to your organization

The BSC has been adapted in different ways over the years, with organizations putting their own personal twist on it. One recent development we’ve seen among our customers is the addition of a goals layer, which are more tactical in nature than objectives. For example, an objective to increase profitability could be accomplished by setting a goal to drive revenue from new markets. This adaptation gives an organization greater flexibility when executing and reporting on strategy.

Gives structure to your tracking and reporting

Organizations often have too much data to sift through. A well-built scorecard gives you a focused way to gather and report the data that matters most to your strategy.

Helps align employees’ work with organizational goals

The Balanced Scorecard helps communicate the long-term plan so everyone understands what you’re trying to achieve and how. Employees will also know how they contribute to the strategy. Each department and individual should be able to see how what they do impacts the various initiatives, measures, and goals that are being reported at the top level.

The system becomes even more effective when you cascade the top level of the scorecard down, so department and even employee goals feed into the overarching organizational scorecard. As a result, every level of the company is in alignment, supporting the organization’s mission and vision.

Think of it like this: There will always be an infinite amount of work, but having a strategy ensures people are doing the right work.

When you go into this process, consider how you’ll simplify data collecting and reporting. With more and more data becoming available, it’s easy to drown in it. Done right, the BSC makes you choose the set of metrics that are important to your business, as opposed to collecting everything.

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7 Balanced Scorecard Strategy Map Templates

The seven strategy maps below are hypothetical and for educational purposes only, but they can serve as a kind of scorecard template as you work on building your own.

1. Bank Balanced Scorecard

Naturally, any for-profit financial institution scorecard will list financial objective statements at the top of its strategy map. Even though the departments, divisions, and territories of financial institutions may have different strategies, they should all tie to one common organizational strategy. Some organizations have one map for all departments and divisions and others have a separate map for each.

2. Manufacturing Balanced Scorecard

Manufacturing companies are primarily concerned with operational efficiency: increasing output and decreasing production costs. Manufacturers also typically place a large emphasis on safety, and so implement many related goals and metrics. Innovation is common in manufacturing strategy maps today, but it is not included in the example above.

3. Software Balanced Scorecard

In the software example above, the customer and internal perspectives are combined. This highlights what the customer is looking for and how the company is responding. There are three areas focused on the customer relationship, market leadership, and operational excellence. The company also split their “Learning and Growth” perspective into two sections: Industry Expertise and Talent.

This is a nice example strategy map because it shows that you don’t have to have a perfect Kaplan-Norton scorecard; you can be flexible with a map as long as it lays out your organization’s strategy in a clear way.

4. Local Government Balanced Scorecard

You’ll notice how this municipal strategy map has five internal process categories. Some city officials call these “key areas of focus.” These groupings of objectives are based on the areas deemed critical for the city, and should tie back into how your city officials relate to your citizens.

For example, this strategy emphasizes safety, a strong economy, and a creative culture, among other things.

5. Hospital Balanced Scorecard

This strategy map begins with a purpose statement. Not all organizations do this, but this may be helpful for healthcare organizations who need to place additional emphasis on what is most critical to them and what they’re trying to achieve.

Note that this scorecard positions customer (i.e. patient) and financial goals together at the top of the strategy map. This is because hospitals (and nonprofits) need steady financing to operate. Remember, the map is a flexible framework for healthcare and other industries, and can be built to meet your needs.

6. Nonprofit Balanced Scorecard

Mission-driven organizations often restate their mission above their strategy map to stay focused on their goal. With all nonprofits, understand there are situations they have direct control over and situations they have very little control over. (For example, providing job placement services is challenging during an economic meltdown.)

Nonprofits have to determine realistic measures, initiatives, and goals that help them make an impact where they can.

7. Education Balanced Scorecard

Higher education institutions typically emphasize student and faculty concerns in an attempt to improve the learning experience, which is a primary performance measure. Note that not every school chooses to put financial objective statements at the top; others use different perspectives and place them differently on the map. Some, for example, prefer to create objectives for things like academic excellence, diversity, outreach, engagement, and other areas.

The same balanced scorecard for a hospital and a university

The four perspectives travel well. Their names and their order change with the mission. A hospital puts patients and community at the top, a university puts students there, and both treat money as a means rather than the goal. The two examples below keep the city's eight-row layout, so you can compare them line by line.

Balanced scorecard example for a hospital

This is the scorecard of a 180-bed nonprofit community hospital with a primary care network, for calendar year 2027. Most of its measures come from national programs, so the baseline is already on file: HCAHPS for patient experience, the CDC's standardized infection ratio for avoidable harm.

Balanced scorecard example for a university

This is the scorecard of a regional public university of about 12,000 students, for FY2027. Retention and graduation follow the IPEDS definitions, so the baseline is the number the university already reports to the federal government.

Want the reasoning behind each sector's perspectives? Balanced scorecard examples by industry explains how governments, hospitals and universities rename and reorder them. To see real public scorecards rather than examples, browse our city and county dashboard examples.

A scorecard doesn't run a hospital or a university. The people named in the last column do.

Understanding Your Scorecard

There are several ways you can put together a BSC: you can use a program like Excel (more information here), Google Sheets, or PowerPoint, or you can use reporting software. For the sake of example, we’re going to show you a BSC in ClearPoint:

What you’re seeing in the image above is what you’d call a “scorecard view.” It is less visual than the strategy map, but provides more detail into the measures and initiatives that are tied to each objective.

Objectives

When you click on an objective in Balanced Scorecard software—say you’re looking at High Compensations in the L&G section—this is what you’ll find:

Here are a few of the elements you’re looking at:

• Owner: You’ll notice that Lawrence Zito is responsible for this objective.
• Description: This is the company-specific description of how Upward Airlines plans to achieve the objective.
• Average Wage: If you click on the chart, you’re able to drill down into the details of the measure and see progress.
• Divisions: Here we can see how the divisions (or child scorecards) align to this objective.

Measures

Measures help you understand if you’re accomplishing your objectives strategically. The measure tied to High Compensation is Average Wage.  Here’s a look at the measure-view in ClearPoint:

You’ll notice some similar fields and some that are different. Once again, you have an “owner” and a chart analyzing the target and actual numbers for average wage to better understand whether goals are being met.

Here, you’ll also see a section for “Measure Data.” This matters because without data, an organization’s measures can’t be measured. (Note: If you’re creating a BSC using a reporting software, it will likely harvest data both automatically and manually.)

There are two key things I think about when selecting Balanced Scorecard measures.

1. Have several indicators – to paint a picture and allow you to understand the relationships and determine what is affecting the outcome you want to achieve.
2. Have a mix of output and outcome indicators – output indicators give you something to manage on a day-to-day basis. You have to look at where you are and be able to predict where you’re going. Outcome indicators show you where you’ve been – what your past actions resulted in.

“See” Your Measures In ClearPoint

Charts are the best way to visualize quantitative data; so management reporting software should have a variety of chart types you can use to show the status of a measure.

ClearPoint has all the standard chart types as well as three additional chart features that organizations often find helpful to tell the story of their strategy execution efforts:

• Year-over-year trend charting to compare last year’s data to the current period without having to create an additional series.
• Plot bands to highlight certain regions in the background of charted data to show the upper and lower limits associated with specific criteria.
• Trendlines to show the direction of a data set. Depending on the type of data you have, you can choose a linear, exponential, logarithmic, power, or polynomial trendline.

Once you’ve created a chart, you can embed it into your website, a PDF report, or anywhere else with ClearPoint embed codes. Whenever you update your numbers inside ClearPoint, you can update every chart, everywhere it appears, with just one click.

Initiatives

Remember that initiatives are key action programs or projects developed to achieve your objectives. One of the initiatives tied to the Average Wage measure and High Compensation objective is “Redesign Employee Satisfaction Survey”:

Beyond the fields you’ve already seen, there are several additions here:

• Description/Analysis & Recommendation
• Start & End Date
• Milestones
• Milestone Gantt Chart

Track Your Initiatives and Projects In ClearPoint Strategy Software

ClearPoint includes a Project Evaluation tool that allows you to track quantitative data specific to project-based elements such as milestones, action items, or project budget management. It enables you to:

• Link projects directly to your strategy (so you know they’re contributing to your organization’s larger goals);
• Track progress with regard to budget, percent complete, and quality.
• Evaluate project status automatically based on your predetermined indicators, such as budget targets, percent complete, start/end dates, etc.
• Include qualitative details and attachments to help explain the project’s status or progress, such as background information and relevant documents.

Getting (& Seeing!) Results

You can see how every objective listed on the strategy map above is only going to be met when measures, initiatives, and action items are delivered correctly and accurately.

The Balanced Scorecard is only useful if you report on it

Having a scorecard doesn’t execute your strategy. You have to put it to work. That means gathering data regularly, considering leadership feedback, reporting consistently, and adjusting as needed. Integrate the scorecard throughout your organization.

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Real-Life Balanced Scorecard Examples

The strategy maps above are hypothetical. These organizations put the Balanced Scorecard to work on real problems:

• Durham, North Carolina. The city had operated for years without a strategic plan, and started one during an economic downturn as budgets were cut. Its scorecard helped the city make more data-driven decisions and work with the county government to pool resources and reduce duplicated effort. Read the Durham case study.
• Fort Lauderdale, Florida. After the recession, the city needed to balance strategic cuts with strategic investments. It asked residents for ideas about the next 25 years, combined them with internal goals, and connected departments through scorecards it presented publicly. Read the Fort Lauderdale case study.
• Rare. The global conservation nonprofit used its scorecard metrics to report biological impact to the public and to engage donors. Its case study reports that Rare grew from a $9 million to a more than $20 million a year operation within five years. Read the Rare case study.

How To Make The Most Of The Balanced Scorecard

Creating a Balanced Scorecard means your strategic planning process is underway, and that’s good news. Think of the Balanced Scorecard as a kind of “North Star,” setting the direction your company wants to go. From there, you can use it to:

• Guide your resource usage. Linking budget to strategy allows you to use your resources as efficiently as possible in pursuit of specific goals.
• Effectively evaluate potential projects. To decide whether to take on certain projects, measure them against your Balanced Scorecard.
• Create departmental business plans. Extend the strategic planning process by having departments create their own Balanced Scorecards, which tie into the organization’s overall goals.
• Manage employee performance. Cascade strategy down even further by using the Balanced Scorecard to set employee goals. Connecting employee goals to organizational goals creates accountability and helps motivate employees to perform at their best.

By applying the Balanced Scorecard in all the above scenarios, you can make strategy a continual process and create a competitive organization that is well-positioned to achieve its objectives.

Use the Balanced Scorecard with Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a process improvement method that came out of the quality movement. Each Six Sigma effort follows a series of steps toward one specific goal, such as “lower production cost.” It deals almost entirely with internal processes, which is one of the scorecard’s four perspectives.

That makes the two a good pair: use the Balanced Scorecard to decide which processes matter to your strategy, then use Six Sigma to improve those. An improvement team that fixes every process it can find spends a great deal and may improve work that isn’t strategic. Pointing it at the processes your scorecard flags keeps the effort on strategy.

Download the balanced scorecard example (Excel and Google Sheets)

The workbook holds the three examples on this page and a blank template, one tab each. Enter your actuals and the status column marks each row on target or below target. It is an Excel file that opens in Google Sheets (File, then Import), and there is no form to fill in.

Need the full template kit? It lives on the balanced scorecard Excel template page. Prefer to build in your browser? The free balanced scorecard builder draws the strategy map as you type and needs no account.

Frequently asked questions

What does a complete balanced scorecard example include?

A complete balanced scorecard example covers the four perspectives. For each objective it shows one measure, a baseline, a target, the initiative that moves the measure, a due date and a named owner. Most examples stop at objectives and measures. Without the baseline and the owner, nobody can tell whether the target is realistic or who reports on it.

Can you show a balanced scorecard example with objectives, measures and initiatives for each perspective?

Yes. The city example on this page has two objectives in each perspective: residents, internal processes, financial stewardship, and learning and growth. Each objective carries a measure, a FY2026 baseline, a FY2027 target, a dated initiative and an owner. Hospital and university versions use the same eight-row layout.

What is the difference between an objective, a measure, a target and an initiative?

The objective is the result you want, such as keeping streets in good condition. The measure is how you check it: the Pavement Condition Index. The target is the level that counts as success, 63 by June 2027. The initiative is the funded project that moves the measure: the FY2027 resurfacing package.

How many objectives and measures should a balanced scorecard have?

The typical scorecard carries 10 to 15 objectives. The examples here use eight, two per perspective. More is not safer: plans with 21 or more objectives complete 9.1% of their initiatives, against 11.8% for plans with 1 to 10. Keep one or two headline measures per objective on the scorecard and the supporting measures one level down.

What does a balanced scorecard look like for a hospital or a university?

The four perspectives stay; their names and order change. A hospital puts patients and community first and tracks harm, readmissions, margin and nurse turnover. A university puts students first and tracks retention, graduation, gateway courses and cash on hand. Both full examples are on this page.

Is there a free balanced scorecard example in Excel or Google Sheets?

Yes. The workbook on this page holds the city, hospital and university examples and a blank template, with a status column that turns each row on target or below target as you enter actuals. It is an Excel file that opens in Google Sheets, and there is no form to fill in.

Sources

• Source: ClearPoint anonymized platform data, plans run on the platform 2017–2024. Objectives: 52,247 in 318 organizations. Initiatives: 90,305 in 315 organizations. Plan structure: 4,184 plans with at least one objective and one initiative. We see the structure of plans, never their content. How we read the data ›
• Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that Drive Performance, Harvard Business Review, January–February 1992.
• GFOA, Fund Balance Guidelines for the General Fund: unrestricted fund balance of no less than two months of operating revenues or expenditures, the 16.7% target in the city example.
• CMS, HCAHPS: Patients' Perspectives of Care Survey, source of the "definitely recommend" measure in the hospital example.
• CDC, NHSN's Guide to the Standardized Infection Ratio (2022 baseline).
• NCES, IPEDS Graduation Rates survey component, definitions used in the university example.

The figures in the three examples are illustrative. The ClearPoint figures come from the platform data above.

Transform Your Balanced Scorecard with ClearPoint Strategy Software

ClearPoint Strategy offers a platform to manage your scorecard, with real-time data visualization, automated reporting, and integration with your existing systems.

See how ClearPoint runs your balanced scorecard — book a demo