It had long been a routine that six vice presidents of Information Technology Division provided CIO with fragmented reports on system availability and project status. I sat in the meeting and put myself in the CIO’s shoes. I thought something was missing. Hardly could I have a holistic view of IT organization, consisting of 170 staff, running more than 10 projects, and operating more than 20 systems that underpin Thailand’s Capital Market. I thought reporting process must change radically.
I was the only engineer in the whole IT organization who stepped out of comfort zone to speak a new language, the management language. I thought reading a classic Balanced Scorecard by Norton might shred some light. I turned page after page and was excited by its concept and practicality. It took me only a week to grasp basic concepts and a day to outline my balanced scorecard. The only criterion I had was that it must address needs of all stakeholders.
Implementing structural changes must be driven from the top. Thus, I proposed to the CIO a set of indicators and their relationship, covering major areas: staff, development time, system reliability, cost, and user satisfaction. His first response was that this was what he had been looking since his arrival at the stock exchange. The moment was extremely sensational and was beyond my expectation. My small contributions made big differences.
He implemented my scorecard within two weeks, improving reporting process and guiding the organization forward. He used my scorecard as a communication tool with the President and IT directors. On a wide scale, he rolled out cascading key performance indicators on all staff at all level. I am proud that alignment of the top and bottom of the organization could be achieved by using my simple yet powerful scorecard.