Benchmarking is a rear-mirror strategy. It’s about catching up with something that has already happened. People who spend too much time in benchmarking, look back all the time. Or sideways. That is why benchmarking is an occupational hazard. Looking back, or sideways, all the time, gives you neck pain. The issue could be severe and needing treatment, such as forced forward looking, stretch of body and stretch of imagination.
But could also be benign. Pain usually recedes within 14 days of treatment. Known treatments are the above mentioned stretches and a couple of books about something nothing to do with your job. Also, it could be managed by looking back or sideways for a very short period of time, say once a month. It is known as the (patent pending) 3 L technique: ‘Look, learn, leave’.
Benchmarking was intended to be the ‘Transfer Lounge’ of the Airport of Ideas, where you are ‘in transit’ before changing planes. Båçåut many mangers took it as a place to stay and live permanently. (Apparently the record is held by Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian citizen, who lived 17 years in Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris)
Comorbidity (Definition: known diseases that usually appear together). The main comorbid entity of Benchmarking is Best Practices. Since any Best Practice is best only until something is better, this is similar to the look-back-and-sideways-induced-neck-pain. Treatment is similar.
I partly agree with the content of this article.
If a benchmark initiative is run properly, it should ideally consider other industries / businesses in order to get inspiration from them.
An exemple : if you try to optimise your product flow management and inventories, even though you’re in industries like steel, chemistry,…, go and have look to Amazon.com or Zappos to check how they deal with the demand and stocks.
Though these businesses have nothing to do with each other, there are for sure analogies that can lead to very useful findings.
In conclusion, the way the benchmarking initiative is performed will end up either with the disease described in this article or with brand new insights to be translated into the corporate context.
So the first step should be to clearly identify what needs to be improved (beside the Excel tables full of figures) – What’s the question ?.
And then consider the businesses and industries that have probably pushed the performance of the concerned area very far as it is of very high criticity for them.