Rich Karlgaard of Forbes has written a really excellent article called, "Benchmarking Blues," which underscores the paradox of many, many businesses. Namely, that while you can't improve what you don't measure, very few companies embrace the discipline of benchmarking.
Read the full article but here is an excerpt:
A flaw common to business and rampant in government is the failure to benchmark. This is not the case with sports, where every contest is a lab experiment in benchmarking. In sports the outcome is just the beginning. Each game or match produces changes in league standings and reams of stats. Performance and relative performance are laid bare for anyone to see.
But in business our instincts are to shut our eyes to benchmarking. We don't want to see. Sure, it's popular to say we do it, and we mouth the words, maybe even convincing ourselves that we love benchmarking. But let me share a secret. I'm often invited to be a speaker at various company retreats. You know, the retreats where the CEO whisks away his top lieutenants and salespeople and traps them at The Boulders or The Breakers for a three-day yackfest about strategy. During the many times I've sat in on these kinds of bull sessions, I've not once heard questions like these:
- What does our competition do better than we do?
- Are our shortcomings rooted in our personnel, our system or something else?
- Which companies that are not competitors now could step in and eat our lunch tomorrow if they wanted to?
