How to Develop a Personal Balanced Scorecard plus the 4 Key Areas Explained

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A personal balanced scorecard has the same characteristics as the real BSC designed by Kaplan and Norton, except that it focuses on an individual's personal life instead of an organization. Like in ordinary BSC developing, it is important to know the four key areas and understand an individual's focus in order to make an effective PBSC. Check additional information about personal balanced scorecard.

A personal balanced scorecard is a method in which a person's key areas are being measured. It compliments traditional indicators, whether financial or non-financial in order to assess someone's personal life vision and mission's alignment. It helps to understand your focus, admit your weakness and make the necessary changes. There are 7 steps in developing an effective personal balanced scorecard:

1.Define the areas in your life, financially and non-financially. Use emotionally laden words like "freedom" or "passion" and see how it will affect you. Make a list in order to assess your personal life and set up the areas that needs work.

2.Analyze your status for each area. Do not be afraid to admit your real status, as the target of a personal balanced scorecard is to help you "fix" those broken aspects.

3.Reflect your vision for each area and picture what you want it to look like.

4.Update the list of areas and take out what's relevant or add up areas if necessary.

5.Analyze your measures and strategies to achieve your goal/s.

6.Know your objectives for each area.

7.Pick out your major focus and give yourself a specific timeframe.

The base of the personal balanced scorecard is the cause and effect strategic mapping by the four key areas - Financials, Customer's Perspective, Internal Processes and Growth and Development. Yes, it resembles a business scorecard entirely in terms of features and application although the definition for each key area differs.

The "Financials" area in a personal balanced scorecard is what sums up an individuals financial status. This is usually related about work and perspective in terms of saving and earning. The life-work-balance comes to play when measuring someone's financial stability, as it should be ensured that a person should be stable while at the same time having enough energy and time to spend with family and friends.

"Customer's Perspective", however, is the area in which the personal and social relationship status of an individual is measured. Family, friends and colleagues serve as the "customers", as far as the personal balanced scorecard is concerned. The amount of time given to each customer, relationship development and progress and how the relationship affects a person's life should be balanced in order to be rest assured that the relationship would not become destructive but rather constructive to someone's well-being.

"Internal Processes" indicator shows what is being done by a certain person to improve and to repair the weakened areas that he or she could possibly have. This concerns the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of a person's life and all the steps that he have taken in order to achieve a complete and happy life. We all know that life is not perfect but we should always keep in mind that there are always ways to turn anything bad into something good, or at least, let something good come out of it. A personal balanced scorecard intends to assess this aspect as much as it wants to assess the others in order for the individual to compare his or her actions with the possible or already visible outcome.

The last, but not the least key area in a personal balanced scorecard is the "Growth and Development" key indicator. This will be the real basis if your "internal processes" strategy is working and if it is helping you direct your path straight to your goal.

If you are interested in personal balanced scorecard, check this link to find out more about personal balanced scorecard developing. Also, you can check other articles in BSC Guides category.

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