as a Gen-Xer working, I couldn’t agree with you more. Actually, I may go further than you.

As a college studying Industrial Engineering, I spent a lot of time studying benchmarking. It was specifically linked to time and motion studies. I personally worked in a foundry timing how workers ground metal using a stop watch and clipboard, we benchmarked the most efficient worker. Broke down the sub-movements he used and trained others to use those exact movements to grind metal coming from the exact same mold. It all made perfect sense.

When I got into the business world, like you, I heard people talking at benchmarking business processes and it made NO sense. How could use a stop watch and clipboard and a break a business process down into a series of sub-movements to be replicated by others doing exactly the same thing?

My complete opposition to benchmarking and best practices came reading one of Warren Buffett’s annual reports where he described the “‘institutional imperative:’ the tendency of executives to mindlessly imitate the behavior of their peers…”

However you want to describe it: benchmarking, best practices or the institutional imperative, why not call it what it really is? Laziness. Stupid, lazy managers, who often like to call themselves leaders, try and copy other people’s receipts for success. Rather than studying, thinking about and refining their own processes, structures and systems for getting work done, they hope to copy someone else’s ‘best practices’ and see magical improvement.

Instead of calling them ‘best practices’, wouldn’t a better term be ‘stupid, lazy leaders’? And if you have stupid lazy leaders, is it any surprise that you don’t get much innovation?