Resistance to change can have a crippling effect on an organization. Innovation and Learning will suffer as employees stick to their old ways and ultimately an organization will be left behind. Saunders, Mann and Smith (2008) observed that an organization needs to prepare soft skills and hard factors to influence attitudes and promote cooperation. To promote soft skills, effective communication of the strategy was key coupled with achieving buy in and aligning implementation plans to get an action plan. These factors combined in their view offered a firm the platform to maximize learning as an organization. Hard factors were related to creating an enabling infrastructure/ environment, understanding key drivers thereby allowing for deployment options.

As Oakland (2003) noted in the QinetiQ case study, a variety of factors were dependable for the success of the BMS other than benchmarking on its own. I would argue that understanding the maturity cycle of your business with regard to quality management actually helps to put things in perspective. By this I mean, an organization will have to know its gaps. The application of self-assessments under the EFQM model for instance allows companies to fully grasp the gaps that exist. The business excellence model under EFQM strongly advocates for benchmarking.

Overall a combination of factors is needed to derive maximum benefit from benchmarking. Becoming a learning organization is one key factor that needs both soft and hard factors to succeed.

How has culture impacted your organization with regard to benchmarking?