Defining performance measures in this manner ensures that you do not have any disconnects or inconsistencies in how or what you measure performance. Multiple Measures Can Be Combined into Several Overall Indices of Performance - One way of reducing the number of measures to a reasonable number is to assign a weight to each individual measure in a family of metrics and develop an index that is an aggregate statistic. Metrics Should Be Changed as Your Strategy and Situation Changes - Metrics are added and deleted from your scorecard, as needs dictate. Based on Research - A graph of a measure without knowing the target or goal is meaningless data that does not help manage performance. You have to know what is good, how good is the best, and so on.
Arbitrary goals are stupid.
Goals are designed to give us a target to shoot for that is challenging, worthwhile, and achievable. Redesigning your measurement system is not something that will insure a successful organization. This is not another management fad. Serious management practices such as reengineering and TQM never live up to their promises as revolutionary new ways of doing business when treated as a fad. Coming up with a good solid set of metrics and actually using it to measure will save thousands of hours of time wasted reviewing charts and graphs in meetings and reading reports on statistics that do not really matter.