The scary part of benchmarking

There is an interview in the Bangkok Post (registration via BugMeNot) with Indraneel Roy, Southeast Asia managing director for Hewitt Associates.

In this interview he states the following:

"Every piece of research tells us that the era we are living in is all about execution. For instance, over the past several months, we have been engaged by a number of banks. Four countries, four banks. They all have the same strategy. But the difference between winners and losers is execution."

I absolutely agree with him that execution is what separates the winners from the losers.

The scary part is the line that strategies look similar - or are the same. Strategies shouldn't look similar, even if the company is in different countries. But they look more and more similar not only between the banks mentioned here, but across many, many organisations. And why?

Because many companies look at each other and say, "hey - you do this very well, let me just copy this. And this. And this one as well."

What happens next is that companies look the same, feel the same, have the same people, and the same products - basically look the same. No inventiveness anymore, and don't talk to me about innovativeness.

Benchmarking is important, no doubt about this, but it needs to take into consideration so much more - culture, uniqueness of the organisation and companies need to develop their own differentiation, their own strategies, their own face, so to speak.

So please - it would be great to step back and say - let's be different. And just stop benchmarking the usual way for a while.