Don’t copy – innovate

When I hear the word benchmark, I immediately think of those undemonstrative arrows carved in various corners of the British Isles, courtesy of the Ordnance Survey, Britain’s official mapmakers. Above is a typical one, set in stone at Carlisle Cathedralin the North of England. These days, however, look for benchmark on the web, and you’re more likely to see something like this diagram, from Stanford University.

Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (permission obtained by email from the AI index research manager), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

With origins in economic theory and widely practised by management consultants, ‘benchmarking’ means copying the practices of your leading competitors, but, Rory Sutherland argues, in a fascinating article in The Spectator, that “Benchmarking hurts businesses by forcing them to devote resources to over-served markets; and it hurts customers by limiting choice and innovation.”

He gives the example of restaurateur Will Guidara, who raised his New York restaurant from No. 50 in the San Pellegrino ratings to Number One.  When he took his staff to a higher-placed rival, he asked them not to concentrate on what was done well, but on what the rival did badly. Coffee and beer were singled out: “The coffee was merely OK, and the beer drinkers received scant attention compared with the oenophiles.” So one employee (a single-origin coffee nerd) was appointed ‘coffee  sommelier’;‘ and a craft-beer nut in the kitchen became ‘beer sommelier.’ Soon Guidara’s restaurant shot up the ratings.

Similarly, Roger Martin raised his minor provincial business school in Toronto, Canada, to one of global significance, “not by producing a feeble copy of Harvard Business School but by doing well what HBS failed to do it all.”

This approach is called ‘reverse benchmarking’ and , says Rory Sutherland, it rewards businesses with higher differentiation, growth and profits; and rewards customers with greater choice. “It also benefits the economy by creating value in new and unexpected ways.”

At the Watermill we are intrigued and impressed by the concept and we’re trying to convert such ideas into action, That means not only providing tuition, accommodation and food to the highest standard we can muster, but also creating extra ‘happenings,’ which, perhaps, our competitors do not.

These have included, from time to time, a little live music in the rose pergola as we enjoy our evening aperitivi under the vine veranda; a lyrical Puccini aria in the new frantoio; a celebration of English comic verse with after-dinner liqueurs in the cosy communal sitting room; a ‘flashmob’ of young saxophonists in the garden and courtyard…

… 0r how about a ride on a vintage Vespa  scooter a la Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday?