Benchmarking is the practice of measuring performance against a performance metric that is usually established by looking at organizations or people believed to be at peak performance or the performance of a group of organizations or people.
I have a love/hate relationship with benchmarking. Though benchmarking usually looks at organizations in similar industries, it fails to account for the variances that make each organization unique. in my experience typically, people aren't looking for similarity of Mission, Vision, and Values when benchmarking for marketplace performance. I also take a little issue with deferring to an external gauge of success.
That being said, I do think there is some value to benchmarking, as long as we don't use it as a narrow definition of success. Benchmarking can provide insight for us to learn from ourselves and from others. We can take time to delve beneath the outcomes to understand actions that are being taken, why those actions are being taken, and what the long and short term impact of those actions are.
Comparing can have a negative impact if we are not certain of what we are comparing and not clear on the application and "why" of the comparison. So, if you must benchmark, carry-on, however, be sure you are defining your measure of success based on the Mission, Vison, and Values that you have set to use as a reference for your actions and outcomes.
