Baselines Not Benchmarks

One thing the past 3 years should have taught us is to believe in baselines, not benchmarks.

Why?

Your goal should be bettering yourself and how you are doing things, not comparing yourself to organizations (and people) with very different variables.

I make the case in “ITIL4: The New Frontier” that every organization is unique in many ways, including:

– leadership
– risk-aversion culture
– expertise of personnel
– maturity of processes
– everything in between.

If there’s that much uniqueness, comparison is futile.

I love the quote, “comparison is the thief of joy” in that comparison bogs you down from focusing on improvement.

The focus should be on improvement.