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Beyond Benchmarking

To make a great leap forward, you need to study something completely different

By John Baldoni

September 12, 2007 — CIO — A long time ago I had the opportunity to spend a season following the Grand Prix circuit in Europe. My role was that of cameraman, but more often I was a utility person, doing whatever needed doing, especially when it came to lifting, hauling or moving things. As unglamorous as my job was, I did have the opportunity to observe race teams up close.

Then, as now, Ferrari was king of the hill. I marveled at the raw power of the highly tuned machines and the synchronized actions of the pit crews. I never thought that what I was observing would become a model, a generation later, for how surgeons manage patient care.

One of the challenging tasks that surgeons face is the patient handoff, that is, transferring a patient from the OR to a hospital room. Research shows that such transfers account for a high percentage of patient errors, some of which can be injurious. Why? According to the Wall Street Journal, handoffs require patient history, proper medication and a full assortment of equipment, all of which needs to be managed with exquisite timing and forethought.

For just this reason, Great Ormand Street Hospital in London has partnered with Ferrari racing to discover how its pit crews manage and plan for routine events as well as the unexpected ones that occur during a race. What the physicians learned contributed to their development of a new standard for patient handoffs that have resulted in a significant reduction in technical and communications errors that could have been harmful to patient health, according to the Journal report.

Look Beyond Your Borders

Amazing? In one sense, yes. But what the good doctors did is what savvy businesspeople have done for generations - learning from the best, even when the best is not in your own field. Benchmarking is standard practice in most companies; but often such benchmarking focuses on companies in like industries. Manufacturers study manufacturers; healthcare providers study other healthcare providers.

Such studies are useful, but they only end up generating incremental improvements. To make a great leap forward, you need to break out of the benchmark to study something completely different, as the doctors who studied Ferrari did. Before embarking on such a venture, however, it's good to consider what you hope to gain from such an exploration. Here are some questions to consider.

What's your aspiration? More than fifty years ago, one man had a harebrained idea that an amusement park could be a nice clean place where families could come and have a good time. That man was Walt Disney. He set about creating the modern-day theme park that would be based, at least in part, on animated or movie attractions that his company had created. People thought he was crazy; the only models for such entertainment were traveling circuses and carnivals. Disney was undeterred. He took as his model the idea of service entertainment in which the park was the stage, customers were guests and the total show was the "unique guest experience." Not only did Disney create a Magic Kingdom, he created a role model for the hospitality industry itself.

 

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