Reverse Benchmark?

Photo Credit - Pixabay

In the 80s, 90s and 2000s benchmarking was a big part of organization strategy.  The approach was to copy excellence of the industry leaders and apply them to your own organization. There were mixed results for sure. 

Those who tout the virtues of benchmarking are a kind of copycat.  Most of the time the benchmarking exercise doesn't yield the kind of results that are expected.  That is because of the difference in the key factor - people.  By people I include all levels, particularly the leadership.  While the skills of people from Organization A may be similar to those in organizations that it is trying to benchmark against (even though they are in the same industry), the mindsets will be different, and therefore, the way that variations in methods are applied would be different.   This means that their organizations' cultures would be different. 

This is also the reason why top performers from one organization don't always do as well in another organization they move to, even though the industry and business is the same.

Even if there are positive results, they don't really do much to make the organization stand out i.e. distinguish itself from it's competition.  Customers are not going to be in a hurry to come to you if you are offering services or products that are commoditized.

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In the current adoption of AI scenario, we see similar attempts to incorporate AI into the organization without sufficient thought (beyond costs) of the possibilities and probabilities of long-term multiple -layer benefits.  This will eventually lead to the feeling of sameness.  Today, some of us are able to tell when a document (email / report / presentation) has been written by AI.

What might happen if the organization were to reverse benchmark?  Have a look at the short clip  that inspired this short piece.

Definitely food for thought for me- please share yours.

Perhaps this Reverse Benchmarking might help us make better choices when choosing how to apply AI at work or in our lives.

5 Conversations that foster Teamwork in the Workplace

We know that the world moves based on #conversations and #decisions.

Here's a useful article on the kind of conversations that #leaders and #managers could have with their #teams to foster #teamwork at the workplace. You may even want to have some of these conversations as one-to-one sessions for specific effectiveness and outcomes.

From the article - "Consistent communication is essential for #collaboration and performance."

Contact me on ryanbbarretto@hotmail.com or send me a DM here if you want to learn how to make these conversations effective for your teams.

Workshop Action - Behaviour Styles for Leaders

This is the next part of the Learning Journey for the two batches of Leaders, where Behaviour (Social) styles, The Tuckman Model, and Team management were covered.  We also worked on how to make performance discussions effective and discussed how to make our teams more effective and productive.  This organization is in the field of HR outsourcing.

This was the participants first experience of a workshop where a PPT was not used.  Participants felt more engaged and enthusiastically shared their perspectives during the discussions - thus enhancing their own learning.  This was made possible through some facilitative processes and lots of simple interactive discussion questions.

Here are some pics of the action from the workshop with the HODs:

Here are some pics of the action from the workshop with the direct reports:

The workshops ended with participants committing to ensure that they do their best to create environments where their teams are able to perform effectively and have effective performance discussions.

Do contact me on +919820155778 if you would like to have Leadership Development Workshops for your organization.