Agreeing High Level Strategic Outcome Targets and Key Performance Indicators

Abstract

Let’s be very clear before we start this chapter that this is not a book about performance measurement. We focus on driving performance improvements using tools like the Balanced Scorecard and Lean, which are both not measurement systems. That said it is our observation that many managers — and unfortunately significant numbers of management consultants — wrongly believe that this is precisely what a Balanced Scorecard is. To an extent this is understandable, as the earliest generation of the Balanced Scorecard, as described by Harvard Business School Professor Dr Robert Kaplan and consultant Dr David Norton, the originators of the “classic” scorecard system, was essentially a “balanced measurement system,” that was architected to over-come the problem of organizations being singularly reliant on financial metrics as a performance steer (see Chapter 2).

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

Michelangelo, Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet (1475–1564)