National Marrow Donor Program Closes in on Goal of Saving More Lives with a Balanced Scorecard
The Summary
The National Marrow Donor Program set an ambitious goal of facilitating 10,000 transplants per year by 2015. They needed a strategic plan that would allow them to evaluate organizational performance based on overarching goals rather than approaching projects and initiatives discretely. The Balanced Scorecard approach helped them develop a broader strategy that included multiple perspectives and allowed them to leverage total organizational strengths. The Scorecard also helped them access the data they needed to make timely and informed funding and operational decisions.
Introduction
Launched in 1987 with a registry of just 10,000 volunteers, The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) now includes seven million donors and over 150,000 cord blood units, the largest and most racially and ethnically diverse registry of its kind in the world. Since its inception, the NMDP has arranged for more than 35,000 transplants, giving these patients a second chance at life. Medical advances are making marrow and umbilical cord blood transplants available to more patients all the time, and in 2009 alone, the NMDP facilitated more than 4,300 transplants.
The Challenge
In order to meet the needs of all patients, NMDP is committed to meeting the needs of all its patients, which means it must more than double the rate of transplants to reach 10,000 per year by 2015.
Although they had a strategic plan in place, they realized that it focused on activities and projects without reaching as far as specific outcomes. The strategy was also too narrowly focuses on processes and financial considerations; they needed a broader strategy that accounted for customer and stakeholder perspectives and helped them build on the strengths of their people, knowledge base and technology.
With an ambitious, long-term organizational goal, NMDP needed to know with pinpoint precision where performance improvements were needed and how to take corrective action. Organization leaders needed to be able to track the way performance was affecting strategic objectives and make impactfulfunding decisions, instead of simply evaluating individual projects and initiatives.
And the organization needed to get everyone working in synchronization towards a single result with an easily understood strategy document that was relevant across all departments.
The Solution
The process began with a comprehensive SWOT analysis and the development of renewed vision and mission statements and strategic themes during an intensive session involving NMDP officers and senior management.
They emerged with a new, more concise and straightforward mission statement—“We save lives through cellular transplantation – science, service, and support”—that specifically defines their mission and the areas that support it. They also developed an Overarching Strategic Result that gave the organization a concrete goal to work towards: “Meeting the need for 10,000 transplants per year by 2015.”
Next, four strategic themes were developed to provide specific goals towards supporting the Mission Statement and reaching the Overarching Strategic Result:
- Global Access and Acceptance (overcoming barriers to transplants such aslack of insurance, transportation, and post-transplant support)
- Deliver Excellent Stakeholder Experience (make sure a cell source donation is available when it’s needed)
- Research (pursue research to improve cell transplantation as a therapy)
- Culture of Excellence (seek out talent, structure and resources needed to continually improve transplant services)
Next, detailed roadmaps were developed for each theme area, with specific objectives identified. The four maps were combined into an organizational strategy map of 13 strategic objectives, 46 strategic measure and seven strategic initiatives. This Scorecard was named Vision into Action (ViA) and with board and senior management approval, it was cascaded throughout the organization to the different departments.
A ViA communications team was appointed to communicate the Scorecard itself and the organization’s progress towards Scorecard goals throughthe distribution of newsletters, intranet messaging, contests, e-mails from the CEO, leadership training, all-staff meetings and employee check-ins. These communications activities helped every employee to understand and get excited about their role in supporting the Overarching Strategic Result.
At the same time, groups of five to 10 key members of each department held sessions to develop their own Objectives, Measures and Initiatives. They were tasked with outlining each department’s contribution to the Strategic Objectives and NMDP mission, and creating a toolkit to identify gaps, overlaps and synergies between departments, identify priorities, correct unsuccessful measures and establish a funding request process for new opportunities.
In 2009, the NMDP decided to automate their Balanced Scorecard processes and reporting usingCorVu, a performance management and business intelligence software system.This made the collection of measurement data much easier and more consistent. It also allowed specific reports to be made available to different audiences, providing a tailored view of the information they needed to make informed decisions.
The Result
The implementation of the Balanced Scorecard approach has given NMDP a clear set of Strategic Objectives in support of the ambitious but critical goal of doubling their capacity by 2015.
All departments enter measurement reports into the software system each quarter, along with comments on performance and predictions for the end of the fiscal year. This information is accessible to senior management, giving them a complete and timely picture of each department’s performance, and allowing them to address issues promptly.
The Strategy Maps providesimple, at-a-glance references that can be used during staff meetings to guide discussions on performance measures and to establish corrective action plans for department measures that are shown to be underperforming based on measurement data. The data also allows them to celebrate and learn from successful measures.
The Balanced Scorecard has also allowed NMDP to allocate resources more intelligently; all requests for funding must be supported by specific and tangible descriptions of the ways in which they further the ViA Strategic Objectives.
Although currently restricted to management, soon all employees will be able to access the ViA Balanced Scorecard data online using the CorVu application, providing direct access to relevant strategy and supporting data throughout the organization at every level.
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