When things get crazy in business…you need to get more organized

I can’t tell you how many blogs I’ve read (or written) that started by stating “The World moves faster today than it ever has!” And, they are all correct. The business environment seems to continue to expand at an exponential rate, and that makes it especially hard for organizations to keep up. It feels like […]

Scoping a benchmarking project is the first step

I’m often asked what the first step should be once you decide you need to benchmark. I’m assuming that you have already done the vital steps of understanding the value this benchmarking effort will bring to your organization, aligned it with a current strategy or business issue, and have common agreement within your organization that […]

In Benchmarking, It’s Time to Get Started

The ability to benchmark your organization’s performance is expanding quickly. Services for metric benchmarking, as well as qualitative (or best practice) benchmarking are growing and expanding. The market has solved barriers around security and confidentiality. If you don’t have a benchmarking source that can guarantee you that level of trust, you need to find another […]

Need to Benchmark? Don’t wander Too Far from Home.

If you’ve followed this benchmarking series, you know there has been a lot of information shared around benchmarking peer groups or those you compare yourself to when you conduct a benchmarking project. My message in this post is that you don’t have to go outside of your own organization or value chain to get highly […]

Building Your Benchmarking Team

In this installment of the benchmarking series I cover team composition. The team is a critical aspect of any project and a benchmarking effort is no different. There are roles on a benchmarking team that you’d expect to see on any project team, but there are some that are unique to this type of project. […]

Using Benchmarking Vendors (Part 2 of 2)

In part 1, of this benchmarking series, I covered a few of the instances where you might want to engage a benchmarking vendor to assist you with your projects. In this installment, I outline my recommendations around what to do when you find a vendor (or short list of vendors) that you might want to […]

Using benchmarking vendors (Part 1 of 2)

This installment of the benchmarking series focuses on using benchmarking vendors and will be in two parts. This part will focus on when you might want to use a benchmarking vendor, and the second part will focus on what to do once you find a vendor. Benchmarking vendors, like all other vendor, should be held […]

Great companies benchmark differently

In a recent post in this benchmarking series, I discussed the issues I see with defining benchmarking peer groups based on industry. That led me to share the similarities I see among great companies when they benchmark. Benchmarking roles In our benchmarking projects, there are primarily two roles. The sponsors are the organizations wanting to […]

Your benchmarking peer group says a lot about you

In this entry to the benchmarking series, I want to cover the benchmarking peer group. The benchmarking peer group is both vital and controversial for the vast majority of benchmarking projects. It is an issue we discuss at the beginning of every project, and it alone can make or break a benchmarking project. But here […]

In benchmarking, you are the output

I wanted to tackle another benchmarking myth in this post. I’ve touched on it in previous posts in this series, but wanted to address it specifically. It is the myth of getting EXACTLY comparable data within peer groups. Why is it a myth? You can’t achieve the elusive “apples-to-apples” comparison when humans are involved, ever. […]

Why you don’t need silos to scale a startup

My esteemed colleague here at SuccessfulWorkplace wrote a piece about using frameworks to help build business processes for startups when they begin to scale up operations. In the post Tom states that; To make the successful transition to the next stage of growth, companies need to formalize management, communications and processes. To a certain extent […]

Getting valid benchmarking data

In my other benchmarking posts I’ve explained that you’ll never get to a level of precision where you will truly have an exact comparative benchmark value. It has been proven and noted that the same person asked the same question will give you different answers. But, even if it were possible, you would not be […]

A benchmarking lifecycle

I’ve mentioned a benchmarking life cycle in my previous benchmarking posts, and there is a definite trend I see emerging among the organizations I work with on a daily basis. The benchmarking need is born The “need” to benchmark is generally born from a few key categories: External disruption: A shift in the marketplace occurs, like new […]

Benchmarking is too hard, so we don’t do it

There is a misconception that benchmarking is a very involved and arduous process. I’m not going to tackle that issue in the blog post; I’ll cover that in my next one. But, that is one of the largest barriers we hear from organizations wanting to use benchmarking to examine a real business problem. The Logic […]

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 […]