They say that you get what you measure.  At board level, measuring what matters is vital because setting the right direction is so much at the heart of the board’s responsibility.  But, at the board level, it is also vital to measure only what matters because boards have so little time to govern so much.  Both of these points I would suggest lie behind the typical board’s attraction to things like KPI’s (key performance indicators) and balanced score cards.  It is surely every board’s dream to be able to look at a single piece of paper and see exactly where their organisation is on everything that matters.  The question is, is it really just a dream?