Futura Industries The balanced scorecard approach is a framework for building a better organization. It relies on the organization placing emphasis on four different perspectives, with the theory being that if the organization excels at these four perspectives it will achieve success. The dimensions are customer, financial, internal business processes and learning & growth. At Futura, Susan Johnson chose to focus most of the company's effort on the learning and growth perspective.

Johnson explained that the reason she favored this perspective above the others is that by emphasizing learning and growth, the company's employees would gain the skills and knowledge that they need to achieve better results in the other perspectives. Thus, by becoming a learning organization, Futura would see improved performance everywhere. If Futura had chosen any other perspective on which to focus, excellence in that perspective would not necessary translate into excellence anywhere else. Only the learning and growth perspective allowed the company to have a multiplier effect on its benefits.

If Futura had emphasized financial results, it may not be able to sustain this because the company might not be a good one in which to work. If Futura focused on processes,...

A focus on the customers is often a good approach, but ultimately Futura's approach does a good job of striking a balance between the different perspectives by emphasizing the one that can impact all the others.
With this focus, Futura measures human-centric objectives. It measures the education level of the workforce and it measure the knowledge base and experience level of the workforce. Other human measures are also used by Futura, so that the company ranks highly in human outcomes and is a desirable place to work as a result of these policies. This approach allows them to measure the learning and growth within the organization -- and then the learning and growth is expected to translate to measures in the other three perspectives as well.

The measures capture the full dimensions of the learning and growth perspective, because they not only measure progress in that perspective but in the other ones as well. For example, the company cites as evidence of its success a 50% increase in revenue without adding personnel. Literally, earning more with the same number of employees is an improvement in productivity. Productivity improvements come…