the all-important tie-in

I want to compliment you on your ongoing series on the 12 Commandments of Successful Performance Management. The June 2005 installment was the best treatment of benchmarking that I've ever seen. Everyone stresses the importance of benchmarking and knowing what the industry benchmarks are, but they often lose sight of the point that the benchmarks are meaningless if they are not tied to your strategy and objectives. Kudos to Kate Vitasek on this informative and timely article (and for that matter, series).

Mike Chamberlain, American Academy of Family Physicians