Applying the Balanced Scorecard in Libraries

For many years libraries were struggling from the lack of formal performance measures that determine libraries’ success or the effect of their services on patrons. Many libraries were basing their performance measurements on informal feedbacks from users. Even though libraries succeeded in developing understandable statements of their missions and goals, there was no relationship between the mission statements and the actual services offered by libraries in order to assess the effectiveness of these services, and align them with the strategic plans or mission statements. The failure in measuring library services affects employees, budget, and the community served by the library. Library employees cannot improve their future performance when their current performance is not measurable, nor can they find out problems, and develop programs that lead to service excellence in the future. Moreover, the library application for grants is more likely to be rejected if its administrators are unable to justify how the money spent benefits the community.
The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a “strategic planning and management system (Kaplan, 1992)” that looks not only to the financial outcomes of an organization in order to assess its performance, but on different other internal and external perspectives. It was developed in the early 1990’s in Harvard by Professor Robert Kaplan and David Norton and was implemented mainly in financial and for-profit organizations before it was successfully adopted by not-for-profit organizations. The balanced scorecard orbits around an organization’s mission and goals and assesses its performance from different perspectives. Kaplan and Norton defined four perspectives: the customer perspective, the learning and growth perspective, the internal process perspective, and the financial perspective.
In the past, libraries focused on the internal process perspective (cost, time, quality) to measure their activities and services and implement change. Yet, a big shift from the internal process perspective measurements to the customer perspective measurements (how much the customer is
satisfied by the service) was noticed in the last two decades. However, the implementation of the balanced scorecard in libraries did not occur until the early 21st century where many libraries, NGO’s, and governmental agencies took the initiative in applying BSC in their institutions. One successful experience took place at the University of Virginia library that developed a plan to implement the balanced scorecard in 2001.
Jim Self, the director of management information services at the University of Virginia library, stated that the balanced scorecard helped librarians to better control statistical operations by limiting the number of metrics between four and eight per perspective. Also, two targets for each metric were defined to measure achievements. Self believed that the “intelligibility” of the balanced scorecard allowed the library to assess its yearly performance by looking at the overall performance pie chart and by comparing charts of different perspectives in order to understand how well the library is doing and locate places that need improvements.
What steps should a library follow for applying the balanced scorecard?
1. The first step is in examining the library’s mission statement and reformulating it, if required, to make it as clear and simple as possible. The mission statement should be at the center of the balanced scorecard project. Then, a plan of work, relating the mission statement to the four perspectives of the BSC, should be drafted. Librarians must ask for example: what kind of financial changes do we need to realize the goal stated in the mission statement? Or what are the internal changes needed to increase staff performance? These questions will help defining the performance metrics for each perspective to be used for measuring the actual performance of the library.
2. The balanced scorecard project manager presents the performance metrics to all people involved in the project by organizing meetings with the public and the library managers. The objectives of these meetings are to create awareness of the goals of the BSC project and to gain support from people involved in the process.
3. The BSC project manager chooses a reasonable number of metrics for each perspective (3 to 6 metrics), ensures that the chosen metrics are measurable, and defines one or more targets for each metric. Different methods can be used to gather the data.
4. The performance metrics will be used to measure the performance of the library from different perspectives and stimulate employees and managers to think how the library should react in light of the gathered data, and the results must improve performance in the future.
5. The last step is to disseminate the findings to the concerned people including employees, managers, community, and funders. The distribution of the results has both internal and external values. It gives employees a clear idea about their actual performance and what it should be done to improve performance in the future. In addition, sharing the results with the public raises awareness of the library’s future services and plans within the community. In addition, the results will provide funders with exact figures on how the funds are used by the library and their effects on users.
The application of the balanced scorecard in libraries has proved to be very efficient since it is adaptable to any kind of organizations, easy to share and communicate the results with staff and community, and provides accurate evaluation of internal and external organizational performance from four different perspectives.