"Say... Look what THEY'RE doing."

  Gary Larson is one smart fellow.  We have always liked his cartoons and used them in various training sessions and presentations.  His cartoons are very funny and full of insights.  This combination is why we believe that Gary Larson is a comic genius.

  By far, our favorite Far Side is the one posted here of the misguided geese walking in a vee formation on the ground.  "Say... Look what THEY'RE doing."  It is brilliant.  

  It is brilliant because it is about the need for benchmarking.  How many times do we feel lke the goose at the head of the vee when we notice someone doing something so much better then we are doing?  We feel... well... we feel stupid.  We feel like we missed the boat.  

     Benchmarking is what we all should be doing both formally and informally.  Benchmarking is good for any business, of any size, in any industry.  It doesn't matter it is a service, distribution, or manufacturing business.  It is always good to know what the Best-in-Class practices and processes are.  What is the most profitable of your competitors doing?  How do they manage their key business processes versus you?  What is the most quality oriented of your competitors doing?  How do they do it?  How did they get to where they are?

  This in a nutshell is Benchmarking.  It is the science and art of looking what others are doing better than you and learning from them.  It is OK to shamelessly copy them but why settle for being tied for first.  Learn what they do and do one better. 

  What if you are the quality standard or most profitable company amongst your competitors?  Excellent.  Congtratulations.  Sit back, take a load off, and relax.  You earned it.  NO!  This is bad advice.  If you follow this advice, you will soon be the geese on the ground exclaiming, "Say... Look what THEY'RE doing."  If you are out front soaring about the others, you want to stay there.   You do not want to get stale.  You do not want to be living off of your laurels.  You want to embrace a culture of continuous improvement.  But, you are the leader?  Who will you look to for best practices?  Look anywhere.  Begin with market leading companies in similar businesses but not competitors.  Look at best-in-class companies in completely unrelated businesses.  We all manage similar processes.  While what we manufacture and distribute is different, the support business processes are more similar than most of us believe.  We all think our businesses are completely unique.  They are, of course, different but there are many more similarities... SAP and Oracle understand this more than most of their customers.

    What should you benchmark?  Everything?  Anything?  Hardly.  The shotgun approach is only good for hunting ducks... er... geese.  It is not good for continuous improvement, Kaizen events, or benchmarking.  The Pareto Principle, as usual, applies.  80% of your issues are do to poor performance in 20% of your business or manufacturing processes.  You want to eliminating these pain points first. (Remember the Theory of Contraints is as deadly accurate as the Pareto Principle.)  One way to improve them is know exactly how your processes are structured and operate versus the same in the  Best-in-Class company.  If done well and right, you will have a pretty good idea of your AS IS process versus theirs.  Then, you can create your TO BE process and begin to bring it to life.