The Perfect Benchmark

There is really only one

I don’t know how much is spent on the benchmarking industry, but companies and governments seem to spend an awful lot on it. The idea of benchmarking seems plausible enough—compare your organization against competitors, and voilá… you can provide many years’ worth of projects and plans to bridge the gap. Many organizations choose to do so, but is it really worthwhile?

No.

W. Edwards Deming would have called it a form of “copying.” Copying will always keep you behind the competition. Instead, you need to be looking for ways to differentiate yourself, not be more like everyone else. Let the competition copy you and spend their resources figuring out what you did to be great.

Also, Taiichi Ohno (of Toyota Production System fame) said that everything you need to know to improve performance is in your own system, if you know how to look. Unfortunately, most companies don’t know how to look. If they did, they wouldn’t be stuck in poorly designed systems trying to benchmark against competitors.

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Comments

Excellent observations!

^^^

Benchmarking

The article takes a very narrow view of benchmarking. Well known prerequisites to successful and useful benchmarking are indicated as alternatives to it. The sort of "benchmarking" implied (and all too common) is indeed unproductive and really a waste of resources. But it's unhelpful to sully the name of an exceptionally valuable tool by describing the poor application of the concept. Ditto for "best practices".

Benchmarking

Every system is perfectlydesigned to achieve the results that it is achieving. Therefore, you need to stop this Benchmarking nonsense and put your resources into improving your own system. When you keep you eye on your competition, you take your eye off your customer. Better keep your eye (and resources) directed at your customer and how your process can deliver what delights the customer.

I agree with what your

I agree with what your comments, but there is a lack of depth. Could you provide examples where benchmarking have led companies down the wrong path? Examples on how to do it improperly?

For that matter, how do companies encourage innovation? How shouldn't they do it? These would give more depth.

Excellent post - I wrote a

Excellent post - I wrote a similar post some time ago: http://www.haimtoeg.com/?p=202 - it is mostly focused on enterprise software support, but I believe applies more broadly than a single industry.