Chapter 3
The Balanced Scorecard Across Eleven Relationship Dimensions
Incompatible measurements produce incompatible conclusions, even when both people are looking honestly at the same relationship.
In 1992, Robert Kaplan and David Norton published a paper in the Harvard Business Review arguing that organisations were measuring almost exclusively financial outcomes — which told them how they had performed in the past but gave them almost no information about where they were heading. The Balanced Scorecard was their solution: a set of measures across multiple dimensions that together gave a complete picture of organisational health.
The same logic applies to relationships. A relationship can look strong on some dimensions while failing quietly on others. We have expanded the original six dimensions to eleven — covering the full range of what makes a partnership function well over time. Without an agreed set of measures, two partners can look at the same relationship and reach entirely different conclusions — both of them honestly.
The Framework — Eleven Dimensions
Relationship Balanced Scorecard
Score each dimension independently before comparing. The value is not in any single score — it is in the gaps between your scores and your partner's. A large gap on any dimension is not a verdict; it is the start of a necessary conversation.
The question to ask when comparing is not "why did you score that so low?" but "what would a 9 look like in this dimension for you?"