Karen is the executive director for a nonprofit daycare organization called Kids-Can-Play. There is an emerging trend in daycare organizations to replace traditional curriculum delivery (i.e., formalized learning via pre-planned themes, activities, and schedules) with play-based learning. Rather than force structured learning on young children, play-based learning leverages the natural curiosity of children by allowing them to lead the direction of learning activities. For example, if a child's curiosity is piqued by an excavator passing by the daycare site, the early childhood educator (ECE) should be spontaneous and work the excavator into the day's lessons. Perhaps children first discuss what excavators do, then they might draw their own versions of an excavator, followed by reading a storybook that features an excavator. Following this, the children (with careful guidance from the ECE) might lead their learning into something related such as how homes are built, or what other objects share the same colour or size. While the organization implements this change, Kids-Can-Play would also like to offer more innovative options for parents to accommodate their unique schedules (e.g., shift work) and to offer other convenient options (e.g., weekend daycare while parents do grocery shopping or other errands).
Karen has heard that Balanced Scorecards are a valuable strategic management system that can help an organization translate their mission and strategy into operational objectives and performance measures but is unsure about how to construct one for Kids-Can-Play. Karen has asked you to draft a Balanced Scorecard to facilitate Kids-Can-Play's transition from traditional curriculum delivery to play-based learning, as well as the organization's desire to offer more innovative options to parents. Karen is hoping that Kids-Can-Play can make both changes con- currently, and so she is hoping you will be able to suggest a relatively simple (i.e., two objectives for each perspective) scorecard that accounts for both changes. She is also worried that as a non-profit organization faced with the financial constraints common to not-for-profits, she is at risk of investing significant time and money into a product that will end up deep in a file drawer. She has asked that in addition to drafting a scorecard for the organization, you provide some guidance on how she can ensure the successful implementation and use of the Balanced Score- card in Kids-Can-Play.
Required:
Develop a Balanced Scorecard to meet Karen's needs.