Gary Cokins

Choice covers both the capacity to control people and events, and an underlying belief in the possibility of such control. Being able to rule your environment gives power to self-determination, even for babies. In a study, researchers attached strings to the arms of infants “as young as four months.” When they moved their arms, music played. The babies grew “sad and angry” when researchers removed the strings and they could no longer make music play, though music continued sporadically.

Wanting to choose comes naturally, though it isn’t linked to any distinct biological advantage. Without choice, as zoo animals show, even if someone else’s decisions set you up in luxury, you won’t be happy. Having influence on control makes people happiest. A nursing home let some patients decide when to watch movies and which plants they wanted. After six months, those who had more perceived choice “were happier and more alert” and, it turned out, “were less likely to have died.”

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I recently presented a keynote presentation at the annual conference of the joint Ohio chapters of the Institute of Management Accountants. I shared the stage with Mike Willis, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the founder of and Chairman Emeritus of XBRL International. Mike posed this question to make an important point:  

Two trains are on the same track 600 miles apart traveling towards each other.  One train is traveling west at 50 mph and the other train is traveling east at 20 mph.  How long will it take for the trains to impact each other? 

1. 8 hours, 30 minutes
2. 8 hours, 34 minutes
3. 8 hours, 42 minutes

The narrow correct answer is B. But an experienced analyst thinking out-of-the-box would ask (1) Who would ride on a train traveling 20 mph?  and (2) Who would put two trains on a collision course?

Framing a problem...

I define Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) much broader than its narrowly perceived view as a CFO initiative with a bunch of dashboards. Under EPM’s broad umbrella are these component methodologies: (1) profitability analysis; (2) forecasting, planning, and budgeting; (3) customer intelligence; (4) process improvement; and (5) strategy execution. The last one, strategy execution, relies on strategy maps, strategic scorecards (with KPIs), and operational dashboards (with PIs).

 The creators of the strategy map and balanced scorecard concept, Professors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, recently wrote an article, “The future of the Balanced Scorecard.” I have excerpted below their five futures expansions. The two that caught my attention are the integration with enterprise risk management (ERM) and with...

How long can an organization survive if it keeps making mistakes? How competitive can a company be if its decisions are bad ones? Who wants to have their organization continue to perpetuate making decisions with flawed, misleading, or incomplete information?

Organizations in a “no fact” zone

I continue to be intrigued that almost half of the 25 companies that passed the rigorous tests to be listed in the once famous book by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, In Search of Excellence, today either no longer exist, are in bankruptcy, or have performed poorly. What happened in the 25 years since the book was published? Ponder this question, “How many of the original Standard and Poors (S&P) 500 list originally created in 1957 are on that list today?” Research from Professor Gary Biddle of the University of Hong Kong reported the answer is 74, just 15%. And of those 74, only 12 have outperformed the S&P index average. Pretty grim. A few years...