 It is an axiom that we should learn from the experiences of others without ourselves having to relive those experiences. It is because of this axiom that humans have developed faster than animals. We have been able to store and impart knowledge and have thus created a bridge of learning, not only between different cultures and geographical areas but also in the temporal sense.
Benchlearning was developed in 1994 by Karlof Consulting as a natural consequence of continually working with benchmarking. Benchmarking largely focuses on key ratios and processes. Benchlearning goes a couple of steps further: first, to causality, i.e. causal relationships, and then to organizational learning, or the insight developed within an organization of what makes for success in that organization. All knowledge is based on experience. Learning is therefore really a question of systemizing experiences and devising problem-solving techniques to work on stored knowledge; naturally we also have to put our creativity to work.
The advantage of benchlearning is that it provides us with a learning reflex, and thus a shortcut to knowledge, through systematically comparing ourselves with role models. We see ourselves reflected in others and consequently raise our awareness of our own organization at the same time as we get ideas to improve it. In a world plagued by planned economy, i.e. one where suppliers have a monopoly and recipients of goods and services lack a free choice between different alternatives, it is important that competition – an extraordinarily effective force for development – should be encouraged. In addition to learning, benchlearning fosters the competitive instinct (which is an important aspect of acquiring information) and a more efficient organization, i.e. the creation of greater value and/or higher productivity.
The combination of development for both employer and employee creates a win-win situation in any organization. Employees become better motivated and the employer gets a more efficient organization which creates more value for customers and owners (or their equivalent). There is good reason, then, for claiming that benchlearning creates utility for the three primary stakeholder groups in all organizations: employees, customers (buyers) and owners (principals).
LEGACY FROM BENCHMARKING
Benchmarking was conceptualized in the Xerox group at the end of the 1970s, and the initiative spread throughout business and commerce as well as to other sectors of society. Benchmarking can be applied to calibrate processes wherever there is a similarity in the production of goods and services.
Benchmarking-related methods can be divided into types and variants:
- Comparisons of de-standardized key ratios. This is done amazinglyoften.
- Comparisons of standardized key ratios, i.e. ‘apples with apples’.
- Real benchmarking, which compares relevant key ratios, procedures and causes.
- Benchlearning, which adds to the above organizational learning and motivation at work.
The first variant does not concern itself with comparable volumes, something that anyone involved in benchmarking soon discovers. Naturally, such comparisons will not be relevant. Even where figures are standardized and irrelevant aspects have been eliminated, as in the second variant, the key ratios involved will elicit a reflex to make excuses because they are not tied in to causality; in other words, we will always be able to say that the comparison is irrelevant.
The third variant is generally initiated by management and can often prove a real springboard to improvement in an organization. This happens when people involved in the benchmarking process both understand that something is being done more efficiently, and how it is being done. Benchmarking should not be imitation, but a motivating source for our own creativity. Intelligent solutions from another environment must almost always be adapted to an organization’s own, specific situation.
The fourth variant is benchlearning, which fosters knowledge of betterworking methods throughout the organization. Through benchlearning we can perceive the development of worker participation and the healthy process which leads to improvement through a better understanding of the whole organization and its relevant metrics. The difference to benchmarking is a question of degree rather than kind. Putting it simply, we can say that benchmarking stresses efficiency, while benchlearning puts more stress on learning in all aspects of the organization – which is not to say that it ignores efficiency for all that.
Both benchmarking and benchlearning are based on the simple theory that it is wise to learn from the experiences of others rather than to try to reinvent the wheel. Experiences can be positive as well as negative; we can learn from mistakes as well as from the success stories.
 BENCHLEARNING – BUILDING BLOCKS
Effectiveness of the organization
Benchlearning was devized by Karlof Consulting as a method that combines the creation of favourable conditions for learning with the ambition of improving organizational effectiveness. An organization’s effectiveness, i.e. the ability to create value for customers, in relation to the cost of creating this value, forms the basis for development work through benchlearning. We can illustrate this by means of the effectiveness matrix.
It is important to find the right balance between customer value and productivity in the short and long-term if companies and organizations are to be successful. Business leaders are finding it increasingly more important to be able to answer the questions, “How do you know that your organization is efficient?” and, ”How efficient can your organization be?”
Learning
Learning through benchlearning has two aims: to stimulate learning that is close to what is strategically or operatively essential in the company, and to develop the ability to learn new things. Both the desire to learn and the conditions for learning are thus involved.
Teambuilding
This word illustrates an important difference between benchmarking and benchlearning. Benchmarking often has a ‘top down’ perspective and is usually initiated by management to improve efficiency in the organization. In benchlearning the responsibility for change is spread over the organization.
Employees are the ones affected by organizational change so it is they who should impel the work of change. For such work to have an effect it is logical that the people most affected by it should feel involved.
Broad participation also means that by involving an entire organization it is possible to utilize the power of the ’good example’ to the utmost. An allusion to the ’burden of proof’ clause from the law to support our case seems apposite here: Persons instituting changes must commonly show evidence of why something should be changed. With a good example as evidence, the burden of proof shifts to the preservers of the status quo, who instead must show why something should not be changed.
Good examples
Good examples are used in benchlearning as a springboard to learning and improvement in an organization. The good example helps to raise ambition levels; it promotes improvement and new ideas; it helps to create an atmosphere of curiosity and open-mindedness in the learning organization. The good example affects an organization’s efficiency in two ways. In the first, the organization gets a yardstick of its position compared to other organizations in the outside world. It is then possible to make calibrations of efficiency and success and to set new goals for the organization in relation to these standards.
The second way in which the good example affects organizational efficiency has more to do with how it does this: how has the good example worked to reach its level of efficiency? Sometimes it could be instructive to lookat a bad example to avoid those mistakes.
The Method
A system has been developed for working methodically with benchlearning.The steps in the process given below can be replaced by other steps, depending on context.
Let us repeat what we said earlier: the difference between benchmarking and benchlearning is a question of degree rather than kind. Benchmarking has come to be used for the comparison of more or less standardized key ratios; in benchlearning, the stress is on coworker participation (teambuilding), learning throughout the organization and the opportunities that are offered to create a self-improvement system of people and working groups.
APPLICATIONS
Learning from the experience of others has a variety of applications. Here are some of them:
- Improvement in previously identified problem areas
- Calibration of efficiency
- Creation of a learning organization
- Searching for areas to improve in
- Learning in decentralized systems
- Making use of synergies
- Bridging differences in company cultures after mergers
- Evaluation of strategic alternatives
- Benchlearning as a sequel to benchmarking.
- Benchlearning as a working method in networks
- Benchlearning for type situations in management and strategy
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