ABSTRACT
The external perspective widens the traditional balanced scorecard and helps to monitor and manage the implications of the environment for the strategy and performance. This chapter provides a checklist of the breadth of external information that one might consider monitoring for the organization. It also helps one widen the vision of one's management team and their staff, so they also look outside their functional boundaries, and outside the organization, at the wider context in which they are working. There are typically three uses for this perspective: Understanding the context of performance, especially when the context might change, making an informed, fair comparison between similar units with different contexts, and monitoring the external environment for changes that may undermine the strategy, or at least mean it needs refinement. Context information is extremely valuable when assessing the relative performance and potential for improvement of similar parts of an organization.
