Threaded Discussions, Capstone Project Example

Learning and Growth

An example of a learning and growth measure that is critical to Wal-Mart but difficult to measure is the ability to create value for more customers. Value creation is relative and every customer has his or her own perception of value. Creation of value for one customer does not justify that the other customer will appreciate that value. In addition, the ability to create value depends on the critical thinking and idea creation ability of personnel which is difficult to quantify or measure. The dynamism of value creation and the varying tastes and preferences of customers makes it difficult to measure or quantify the ability to create value, yet it is a critical aspect in any organization.

My Choice of a Student’s Measure

I decided to choose creation of new products as a learning and growth measure from my fellow student’s work. Creation of new products can be measured or quantified using percentage or numerical metrics. For instance, quantification of new product creation can be in terms of total number of new products created per year. For example, the company managed to create 12 new products within the last financial year.  New products can also be quantified as a percentage of the total products offered by the company. For example, 15% of the total products being sold are new in the market.

Integration

Looking at balancing of the four perspectives in a Balanced Scorecard, the most difficult aspects concerns linking the objectives between the perspectives and how each one of the objectives contributes to attainment of another objective till the ultimate purpose is attained. For instance, it was quite challenging to step by step link learning, internal, customer and financial success. This procedure required critical thinking on how to link the objectives in the four perspectives. For example, reducing cycle time could not link with any objective in the customer satisfaction perspective and thus had to link it direction to financial perspective as a means to reduce cost thus increased returns on investment. This was quite challenging and required critical thinking.