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Missy Daffron

Journal 5

April 21, 2017

As I reflect on my reading this week I am drawn to several things that could be beneficial in how I train and how we review staff. I agree with the statement that deciding what to control is just as important as deciding whether to control or how to control. I have to stop and place myself in two different spaces. As I sit in Houston Texas in a ballroom I watch some of the most amazing Ballroom and Latin dance couples I try to take note of all that is going on around me. Yes it is about the dancing but it is also about so much more and in my role guiding studio managers I need to see and gather information so that I can communicate effectively. In the dance business the owners/managers seem to always focus on the bottom line in other words “its all about the dollar”. I agree that measuring performance using financial measures is important, however we must look and consider the other three perspectives especially in our business.

Customer - our most important asset. This is the reason we are in business. Without positive customers who have wonderful experiences and want to invest in themselves and their dancing we would have nothing. I plan to focus more on customer defections. I find that some of our studios have some form of tracking system to measure the students that are not returning but a clear program is not in place in the majority of our studios across the country. Because of this reading and course I have researched programs that could be user friendly and affordable for all of the franchisees I work with and hope to implement one in 2017.

Internal perspective is something I feel that most companies I work with have success with. Studios understanding that their performance is measured in terms of quality. Because we are a service business we are always striving for excellence spending a great deal of time training our professional staff and modeling what excellence is. We always have to think about the message of value that we send to our clients. Always showing proof of progress and instilling a value that exceeds their expectation.

Add more about control, the below paragraph is from the book.

· . Deciding what to control is just as important as deciding whether to control or how to control. In most companies, performance is measured using financial measures alone. However, the balanced scorecard encourages managers to measure and control company performance from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal, and innovation and learning. Traditionally, financial control has been achieved through cash flow analysis, balance sheets, income statements, financial ratios, and budgets.