Benchmark to stay ahead of the disruption curve

Most of the information I read about disruption focuses on the fact it is happening all around us and warns that organizations should be prepared to deal with it. A quick read of the news tells me that it is already too late for some and getting very late for others.

I’ve even written about it myself. But, there is an alternative to being behind the disruption curve playing catch up; create your own disruption curve through benchmarking.

The alternatives are too ugly to ignore this opportunity.

The Disruption Curve

I created the attached graphic to show how I’ve seen organizations use benchmarking to break through their thinking to a new state of operation. I see this a lot with continuous improvement efforts, but it applies to any organization issue, really.

The organization realizes they are having an issue (poor performance of some type), they figure out how they are going to solve the problem, and the implement the solution. That takes them to point “A” and they celebrate. Soon, the backslide starts and they re-double their efforts and get back to where they were; point “B”. They may experience another backslide to point “C” or realize at point “B” they are working too hard for too little gain, and they ask “how are others solving this problem?” and execute a benchmarking effort.

The Cost of Not Knowing

This radically changes the way they look at the problem (creates disruption) and they achieve a breakthrough in their performance and are able to maintain that performance. That bouncing back-and-forth between point A-C is what we’ve termed the “Cost of Not Knowing”. Organizations feel that benchmarking is too hard and complex, and instead of taking a logical approach to learning, they choose not to act and see incremental bounces in performance. Not exactly what shareholders like to see.

Here Comes Some Help

I’m here to say (and show you) benchmarking doesn’t have to be hard. So, I’m going to start a series around benchmarking that is built for the real world. The first part of that series is a link to these two benchmarking case studies. They’ll show you how General Dynamics and GlaxoSmithKline used a simple benchmarking approach to achieve real results.

I’ll follow with other posts over the coming weeks to give you real advice on how to approach benchmarking to help achieve your organizational goals. Let me know what you would like to hear about as a part of this series and what the cost of not knowing means to you.