Companies have always found it hard to balance pressing operational concerns with long-term strategic priorities. The tension is critical: World-class processes won't lead to success without the right strategic direction, and the best strategy in the world will get nowhere without strong operations to execute it.

In this article, Kaplan, of Harvard Business School, and Norton, founder and director of the Palladium Group, explain how to effectively manage both strategy and operations by linking them tightly in a closed-loop management system, which comprises five stages.