Illustrating an Organisation’s Strategy as a Map

Business strategies need to be communicated and internalized by employees to make a difference. In this chapter we explore how balanced scorecards and strategy maps can facilitate such communication and dialogue among employees. We build on references from the field of strategic management control and a well-grounded overview of the concept of storytelling from the field of cinema studies. In addition to this, we offer an in-depth case description of how the Swedish €100+ million amusement park group, Parks and Resorts Scandinavia, has deigned their strategy map visually, to engage their employees in talking about the strategy and measuring its execution. Our recommendation is that designers of scorecards and strategy maps should take the learnings from motion-picture storytellers into account and apply these experiences in their effort to make the strategy everyone’s job. We especially highlight the two concepts (1) simple design that creates intense content, and (2) “suspension of disbelief”, i.e. how the designer of the strategy map can strike a deal with the viewers (the employees in the organisation) such that they interpret and trust the content in the strategy map.