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On the Balanced Scorecard:

My opinion is that companies after taking these quadrants of the
Balanced Scorecard get back into the old rut of managing by metrics.

Let’s take the example of the focus of the BSC on Customers. Many
instances can happen as to how companies can interpret this
quadrant. For example, one company can say it will measure “the
number of times we meet our customers” which is at a very basic
activity level kind of measure. While, another can choose to
measure “Customer Satisfaction level” and while it is a
more ‘evolved’ method than the first one, it can still deteriorate
into meaningless number crunching. While a third company can
say “Using the Pareto principle, let’s see which 20% customers
contribute 80% of our business , take their feedback and measure as
to how we have implemented their views into our products/services”

So while all the three firms can claim to implement the BSC only the
third one is actually using it to its full potential.

The really worrisome part is that the BSC is now being touted by IT
firms and the real fear is that of getting snowed under data.