I, too, disagree with Ron Davison's notion that benchmarking has no role
in learning organizations. My disagreement is based upon a broad
interpretation of his remark.
Benchmarking is a learning tool. Those of us in organizations who go out
to benchmark, for instance, against other roughly similar organizations
are not doing so to replicate and bring back from the observed
organizations exact processes or specific functionality.
What we hope to do is learn about those interactions whose essence can be
transferred in a changed form into our own organizational culture. We go
out to observe examples of success which we deem to be farther along the
Path of continuous improvement, self-realization and actuation (sounds
nifty, no?).
Best regards,
-- Barry Mallis bmallis@markem.com Total Quality Resource Manager MARKEM Corporation Keene, NH U.S.A.Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>