The main reason for the introduction of the balanced scorecard was that, in the authors' views, organizations only measured financial performance. There was too much emphasis on financial measures and not enough on operational performance. By complementing financial measures of past performance with the objectives and measures of financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth, managers are provided with a framework to translate a strategy into operational terms. The great thing about the balanced scorecard is that it minimizes information overload by limiting the number of measures. It forces managers to focus on the handful of measures that are most critical.
This article made it finally possible for managers to express and measure operational performance. Great thing about the balanced scorecard is that it a simple visual tool. If you like this article, the logical step is to read their follow-up HBR-articles 'Putting the Scorecard to Work' (1993) and 'Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System' (1996) or their 1996-book 'The Balanced Scorecard: Turning Strategy into Action'. The article uses simple US-English.
