No Comparison Judging your company against the competition could be fatal.

Comparisons are a source of endless illusion. As long as weappear to be doing better than someone else, we can feel that wemust be doing well, so we don't need to change. These illusionscan begin when we compare ourselves with our own past performance(rather than simply learning from it) or with the performance ofother organizations.

The companies we're comparing ourselves to may all beperforming at lower levels than the market requires. They mayall be doing it wrong. Since every organization is unique,another company's solutions may not apply to us. Imitatingothers may take too long or come too late.

This problem is compounded by the fact that we may not even knowwhat those we're comparing ourselves to are really like. We canallude that we know what these other organizations are doing, butwe may be basing our opinions on partial, incomplete or erroneousinformation.

In our volatile world, standards can change faster than ourability to improve against them. If we've grown at an annualrate of 15 percent compared with an industry average of 5 percent,we may be wildly successful--unless a new competitor from anunexpected direction or unrelated industry finds a way to deliverour service at 60 percent of our cost. We may copy something thatis successful today but will be obliterated tomorrow.

Comparing can ultimately lead to a disastrous illusion becauseit's looking at the past (maybe up to the present) rather thanto the future. The past and the present can be a useful guideline,but measuring against the future is where true success is found.Comparison can help us try to get a bigger piece of what weperceive to be the pie, but it can't show us how big the piereally could be or where other pies are.

Causes Of The Illusion

What leads us to the idea that comparing can be a successful wayto run our business? Here are some possible factors:

• Since from the time we're children many of us feel pressureto be like the "best"--the most popular, best-dressed,most athletic, smartest--comparing can become the"normal" thing to do.

• Many of us have an inherent fear of being left behind, so weconstantly check to make sure we're keeping up.

• Because it's much easier to compare and copy than it is tolead and set our own standards, we can let our own lack oforiginality drive our plans.

• Since it's much easier to look at or analyze the past thanto anticipate or create a future, we can easily allow ourselves tobecome immersed in the past.

• Many of us have a tendency to hero worship, which can lead tothe erroneous conclusion that the big guys have already thought ofeverything and are doing it as well as possible.

Shredding The Illusion

Our action plan to shatter the comparison illusion begins withan organizational commitment to look for new paradigms, new rules,a new game. The most important question becomes "How do Ilead?" rather than "How do I follow?" We have tofind ways to create breathing room for ourselves rather than justfight for a little bit bigger piece of an already divided pie.

In sports, world-class athletes focus first and foremost ontheir own game. Great sprinters don't necessarily look overtheir shoulders. Top golfers don't always fret over the leaderboard. The best wide receivers run their patterns and oftenconcentrate on the football rather than on the defender.

World-class organizations approach their work the same way. Theyfocus on how they can best meet their customers' needs. Theyare aware of their competitors, but they don't let othersdictate their directions or practices.

The survive-and-thrive goal today has to be to develop anorganization that isn't exactly like any other--not just to bedifferent, but because difference means something special to allstakeholders. The uniqueness needs to be both external (creativeservices and products, unusual and original responses to marketconditions and customer needs, refusal to merely satisfy minimaltrade or government guidelines) and internal (policies that promoterather than restrict freedom of movement, procedures that encourageflexibility of response, systems that measure and benchmark what noone else considers important--or considers at all). In other words,rather than comparing ourselves to standard industry practice oreven "best of class," we are constantly asking ourselvesthe question, "What do we do (or what could we do) better thananyone else?"

Success generally comes from successfully exploiting contrastsrather than from ensuring performance similarities. Marginaladvantages in comparative categories have little power to open newdoors. It's difficult, if not impossible, to copy others at afast enough clip to ensure success or even survival. We need tofollow analysis of market needs with the question "How can wemeet this customer need in a way that no one else is doing--or evenconsidering?"

It's the focus on the special that wins the prize. AsMichael Treacy and Fred Wiersema said in their book TheDiscipline of Market Leaders (Addison-Wesley), "Byrelentlessly driving themselves to deliver extraordinary levels ofdistinctive value to carefully selected customer groups, marketleaders have made it impossible for other companies to compete onthe old terms. . . . No company can succeed today by trying to beall things to all people. It must instead find the unique valuethat it alone can deliver to a chosen market."

We don't, of course, want to reinvent the wheel. But wedon't want to race down the competitive highway on retreads,either.

Leadership Attitudes

As leaders, we need to believe and spread the idea to our peoplethat it's contrasts, not comparisons, that lead tobreakthroughs and competitive advantages.

We need to learn from but not be content to be compared to ourcompetitors on processes and management methods.

The better route is to look for things that nobody else is doingand exploit these areas. Our competitors, for example, are focusingon price, terms and delivery--so we watch those things, even as wefocus our strategy on product value and service.

This is really benchbreaking: the focus on measuringourselves against the contrasting, unusual or critical--and oftenvery difficult-to-measure--items that will really determine ourfuture success.

The first part of benchbreaking involves measuring thedifferences between ourselves and others and looking for ways toexploit these differences. Rather than trying to close the gaps orignoring the ways in which we're different, we try to findopportunity in the gaps and leverage the differences to the limit.In marketing and advertising, differentiation has long been thesupreme guiding principle. Today, it has to be a way of thinking ineverything we do.

A second key component of benchbreaking is looking for theunusual. It's looking at employee turnover as a measure of howwe and our competitors are doing on employee incentives andempowerment--key items for success in the 21st century. It'scomparing ourselves to different kinds of organizations--like theconcrete company, struggling with getting trucks on site with theright moisture content, that compared its delivery process with apizza delivery company. It's looking outside the culture forwisdom wherever it can be found.

A third major component of benchbreaking is focusing on thethings that no one else is thinking about or measuring. Thisincludes issues like how thoroughly the corporate vision isunderstood or followed, acquisition or exploitation of uniquemarket knowledge, the organization's learning capacity, newproduct and service innovation and success rates, percentage ofrevenue and profit from new products, the ease of informationtransfer, and the number of new ideas and innovations generated bycustomers, suppliers, teams and employees.

Learning And Asking

Comparing generally gets us focused on the wrong thing:yesterday's news, yesterday's results, yesterday'svictories, and (at worst) yesterday's illusions. If we dofinally beat the benchmark, we can end up in a truly fatalposition: believing that we're superior and resting on ourlaurels. This kind of contentment is deadly.

The only antidote is to remind ourselves and our workersconstantly that there's someone out there, someone we don'teven know, who's planning ways to wipe us out and take our"secure" position away. It's illusion to believe thatwhat we're dealing with is totally different from anythinganyone has ever encountered before, a completely brand-new problemor opportunity. But a more deadly illusion is to think that we canbuild a future on comparisons and copying.

We need to be pulled by the future, not pushed by the past.