A Goal Tree helps clarify the relationships between a system's purpose and the conditions needed to fulfil it, creating a reference "benchmark." It was designed by Bill Dettmer, a Theory of Constraints consultant and founder of Goal Systems International.
This diagram is made up of necessity relationships. This means that for one element to be achieved, all the elements it's connected to must also be achieved. Each arrow in the diagram represents this relationship from one element to the next.
In the above picture, for example, to achieve a profit margin higher than 15% (the top goal), you must meet the critical success factors it's connected to. Specifically, those are: a customer satisfaction rate above 96%, a throughput higher than 20%, operating expenses less than 6% of revenue, raw material inventory below 1 million, and an employee turnover rate less than 2%.