The Efficiency Reformation left the Church of Instrumental Reason in an uncomfortable position.
Efficiency remained important.
Improvement remained essential.
Optimisation remained sacred.
Unfortunately, nobody could agree precisely what any of these things meant.
This uncertainty generated considerable frustration.
Fortunately, a solution emerged.
The solution was benchmarking.
The principle was disarmingly simple.
If one could not determine whether performance was objectively good, one could at least determine whether it was better than someone else's.
The insight was immediately recognised as transformative.
For centuries organisations had struggled with difficult questions:
"Are we successful?"
"Are we effective?"
"Are we fulfilling our purpose?"
Benchmarking rendered such questions largely unnecessary.
A far more manageable inquiry became available:
"How are we performing relative to comparable organisations?"
The movement entered a period of extraordinary enthusiasm.
Comparison became a strategic priority.
League tables appeared.
Rankings multiplied.
Indices proliferated.
Performance reports acquired increasingly elaborate comparative sections.
Entire industries emerged dedicated to helping organisations understand where they stood relative to other organisations attempting to understand where they stood.
This was regarded as significant progress.
The first Benchmarking Crusades were modest.
Organisations compared themselves with direct competitors.
The results were useful.
Encouraged by this success, the practice expanded.
Universities benchmarked against corporations.
Corporations benchmarked against government agencies.
Government agencies benchmarked against international sporting bodies.
The criteria occasionally became difficult to explain.
This did not diminish enthusiasm.
The movement's leading theorist, Professor Augustus Comparator, articulated the new orthodoxy in his influential work Relative Excellence.
Its central thesis was concise:
"Performance is best understood comparatively."
The statement was celebrated for its practicality.
A small number of critics asked:
"Comparatively with respect to what purpose?"
Their concerns received limited attention.
By this stage, comparison itself had become a purpose.
The most ambitious benchmarking initiatives soon acquired a global character.
International performance networks were established.
Cross-sector benchmarking alliances emerged.
Worldwide excellence partnerships flourished.
Organisations that previously shared little beyond existence now found themselves competing on common metrics.
The resulting rankings generated considerable excitement.
One university celebrated its rise to third place in Organisational Agility.
No one could later explain how agility had been measured.
The achievement remained a source of pride.
A government department achieved international recognition for Stakeholder Responsiveness.
Several stakeholders expressed surprise upon learning this.
The department regarded the ranking as vindication.
Meanwhile, a regional agency became a world leader in Strategic Adaptability Readiness.
The meaning of the category remained under review.
Its numerical performance, however, was exceptional.
The movement soon encountered a remarkable phenomenon.
Organisations increasingly adapted themselves to improve comparative standing.
This was considered entirely rational.
If rankings measured excellence, higher rankings presumably indicated greater excellence.
The logic appeared impeccable.
A hospital adjusted procedures to improve its benchmarking profile.
A university redesigned reporting systems to align with ranking criteria.
Several corporations restructured operations around performance indicators used by international comparison frameworks.
The outcomes were mixed.
The rankings improved dramatically.
The underlying activities proved more variable.
This distinction was regarded as unnecessarily negative.
The high point of the Benchmarking Crusades arrived with the creation of the Universal Comparative Excellence Index.
The Index sought to compare all organisations using a common framework.
Universities.
Hospitals.
Businesses.
Government departments.
Museums.
Research institutes.
Transport authorities.
The ambition was breathtaking.
The methodology was equally impressive.
The explanatory document exceeded nine hundred pages.
Only a handful of people ever read it.
Several became consultants.
The launch attracted considerable attention.
For the first time, organisations could discover their comparative position within a unified hierarchy of excellence.
The rankings generated immediate controversy.
A botanical garden outperformed several multinational corporations.
A sewage authority ranked above three universities.
An insurance provider achieved world-leading scores in Transformational Strategic Vitality.
The provider later admitted uncertainty regarding what this meant.
The ranking was retained.
As criticism grew, the Index's architects defended their methodology.
The measures were robust.
The models were rigorous.
The framework was evidence-based.
The calculations were transparent.
This reassurance proved effective.
Few critics understood the methodology sufficiently to challenge it.
The Index continued to flourish.
Over time, benchmarking became deeply embedded in organisational culture.
Leaders increasingly spoke of positioning.
Standing.
Relative performance.
Competitive alignment.
Comparative excellence.
The language of purpose gradually receded.
The language of comparison expanded to fill the space.
Historians generally identify one speech as emblematic of the period.
Addressing an audience of senior executives, Professor Comparator declared:
"We may never know what excellence is."
The audience listened attentively.
Comparator continued:
"But we can know who has more of it."
The applause lasted several minutes.
Scholars now regard this moment as one of the defining achievements of the Church of Instrumental Reason.
The movement had solved a difficult philosophical problem.
Rather than determining what was valuable, it had discovered something considerably easier:
Determining who was ahead.
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