Beware of Benchmarking!     

If there was ever a business quicksand pit, it would be the practice of benchmarking.  Benchmarking, as a business practice, came into prominence in the 1980s as organizations strived to find ways to improve themselves.  A worthy exercise at its basic level, benchmarking is the process of comparing how your company or organization does things with how others do things.  In particular, those companies or organizations perceived as industry leaders.  Now this in and of itself isn't so bad.  There can be value in studying how others do things.   

My issue is that there is a tendency to compare your RESULTS with theirs and attempt to replicate them and here's where benchmarking can be a misleading endeavor.