Posted by Rob on December 02, 2001 at 12:41:45:

In Reply to: Re: Best practice as a damned conundrum posted by Patrick Kinzler on December 02, 2001 at 04:31:14:

Thanks Jeff and Patrick

I understand that benchamrking is usually implemented against the best "peer" organizations within a particular industry. The logic is to learn from, or merely copy, the best.

The reality is that organizations employ thousands of people with thousands of degrees, many of them MBAs and PhDs, yet they cannot trust the degrees of these employees to lead the way forward within the organization, other than to do what students do best, gather - process - reformat - present information.

This is a good things that graduates do for organizations, but surely the collective knowledge can do a lot more than try to "learn" from peer hero organizations? Surely the organization has an incredible collection of case studies to go by, if one counted all the business-related qualifications alone.

Unfortunately, with the best of intentions, organizations either cannot, or don't want to formulate and implement hardcore strategies. The concept of 30-day strategic objectives still excite me. How many executives are willing to resign or take a loss in shares or bonuses if their strategic objectives are measured and then come up short?

This may sound like a criticism of large organizations, or enterprises, but it is not. Strangely enough if it weren't for enterprises copying each other by either being early leaders or quick followers, then few technologies would have seen the ubiquitous uptake it has. We should just keep one of our eyes open for the honesty of real organizations. Do balanced scorecards work? Sure they do, but.... Does benchmarking work? As an industrial tool, sure it does, but.... and lastly is there generally much room for innovation and creativeness in organizations that are highly technology dependent? Off course not - the engineering has already been embedded in the computer systems.

Does it mean enterprises won't benefit from said creativity? Off course they would, but that would mean that the budget process would have to change, the systems would have to adapt, managers would have to make room for brighter underlings, and it would result in a state of chaos! It would initiate a social revolution, and I don't think organizations are generally given to supporting those within their own ranks.

Sorry for the lengthy blah blah, but thanks for the opportunity.

Please note that seriousness aside, a lot of what has been said is with a pragmatic tongue-in cheek attitude. Enterprises are socially more needed than their employees, as current global realities are proving once again.

Regards,

Rob

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