The document discusses the balanced scorecard, a strategic planning and management system used by organizations to align business activities to their vision and strategy, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organizational performance against strategic goals. It was developed in the early 1990s by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton as a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial performance measures to traditional financial metrics to give managers and executives a more 'balanced' view of organizational performance. The balanced scorecard has become one of the most widely used strategic management tools.