Upfront: The Performance Power Grid

Traditional management reporting models haven't helped most companies close the gap between strategy and results. According to David Giannetto and Anthony Zecca, authors of "The Performance Power Grid: The Proven Method to Create and Sustain Superior Organizational Performance" (Wiley, 2006), The Balanced Scorecard and related strategic planning models are designed so that strategy remains the province of the top 5 percent of the organization, and the people who make things happen daily remain in the dark.

"Your employees want to contribute to the bottom line, but no one in the higher levels of management is telling them what, specifically, they need to do to achieve that," explains Giannetto. "Employees need a clear, practical way to understand exactly what they should be doing, every hour of every day."

Giannetto and Zecca claim that strategy will result in improved performance only if it is paired with superior execution. "A company needs strategic objectives, but dwelling on what the right objectives are should not paralyze it. What matters is action," they write.