1. Measures that do not focus on strategy. A common problem is that an organization will adopt some new non-financial measures, but fail to align the measures adequately with strategy. According to Dr. Norton,
“The biggest mistake that organizations make is thinking that the scorecard is just about measures. Quite often they will develop a list of financial and non-financial measures and believe they have a scorecard. This, I believe, is dangerous.”
For example, in one case a bank’s IT department had identified measures and benchmarks for being a world class IT department. According to those measures, they had done very well. However, the measures used by the IT department were not tied in with the overall business strategy and therefore discouraged the IT department from meeting the strategic business needs.