How are Italy and Performance Management Similar?

This past week I have been in Milan and Rome presenting seminars and meeting with Italian customers of my employer, SAS. However during the weekend I was tourist. How can anyone not admire the incredible structural achievements of Italian sculptors, artists and architects? As examples in Rome there is the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Spanish steps and all the wonderful piazzas.

And of course, there are all of the churches including St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican. The structure of these churches, including their tall columns and ornate decorations, is breathtaking. Inside each church I visited, as I gazed at their high ceilings, I asked myself this question: “How much of this beauty built by people centuries before us was the result of art, craft, or science?” And similarly for today’s organizations implementing the various component methodologies of the performance management framework (e.g., dashboards, scorecards, strategy maps, costing models, and customer intelligence reporting), how much is art, craft or science?

This past week I have been in Milan and Rome presenting seminars and meeting with Italian customers of my employer, SAS. However during the weekend I was tourist. How can anyone not admire the incredible structural achievements of Italian sculptors, artists and architects? As examples in Rome there is the Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Spanish steps and all the wonderful piazzas.

And of course, there are all of the churches including St. Peters Basilica in the Vatican. The structure of these churches, including their tall columns and ornate decorations, is breathtaking. Inside each church I visited, as I gazed at their high ceilings, I asked myself this question: “How much of this beauty built by people centuries before us was the result of art, craft, or science?” And similarly for today’s organizations implementing the various component methodologies of the performance management framework (e.g., dashboards, scorecards, strategy maps, costing models, and customer intelligence reporting), how much is art, craft or science?