Balanced Scorecard & KPIs

I was going to write about the normal drivel of my day, my workout and my food choices (ho-hum), but after reading Wendy's post (her link at right), I've decided to write about this.

I always love it when things I learn in the business world carry over and can be applied in the real world. I've just realized that this is true of the concept of the Balanced Scorecard & KPIs.

In business terms, it's a way of measuring the state of your business based on four areas: Financial, Customer Satisfaction, Employee Satisfaction and Quality. Normally, we tend to think that by focusing too much on one thing that the other things will suffer. That's why it's called a balanced scorecard - you evaluate your progress on each of those areas and add them all up to give you an overall rating of how you're doing. And it's true: if you do focus too much on one part the other parts will suffer.

KPI is an acronym for Key Performance Indicators. These are the individual things within the balanced scorecard framework that you measure. They can have equal or different weights, depending on how much impact you think they have on the overall category.

So what the heck does this have to do with weight loss? Well, I think that it's very easy for us to put too much focus on one area of our lives to the exclusion of everything else. Plus, we can put too much weight (pun intended or not, depending on how you look at it) on our actual weight on the scales. There are many, MANY ways of measuring our progress in terms of physical health.

If we agree that Physical Health is one of the categories in our Balanced Scorecard of Life, then what are its KPIs? Here are some suggestions. You can decide which ones are meaningful to you and how much "weight" to put on each of them:

1. Weight
2. Body fat percentage
3. BMI
4. Body measurements
5. Morning resting heart rate
6. Clothing fit
7. Blood pressure
8. Cholesterol
9. Bone density
10. Number of days per month physically active
11. Length of daily workout sessions
12. Weight lifted
13. Improvements in race times

I'm sure there are more than just those, but it's a good place to start. For me, I tend to use weight, morning resting heart rate (it goes down as you get fitter), clothing fit, number of days physically active, length of workout sessions, amount of weight lifted and improvements in race times.

But the weird thing is -- and it's true for KPIs in business, too -- that each of those things can have an effect on the other. And sometimes they can have a "chicken-and-egg" relationship. The bottom line for me, though, is that I cannot measure my progress in terms of physical health simply by weight alone.

And the thing is, when taking a Balanced Scorecard approach to life, Physical Health is but one dimension. Emotional Health, Financial Health, Family/Relationship Health, Intellectual Health, Cultural Health, etc. are all equally important factors. The key is in figuring out the right balance for us.

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make is that they put too much focus on one area of their business to the exclusion of the others. I just want to make sure that doesn't happen to me in my life.