Benchmarking

You remember the old conundrum. A frog sits on the edge of a pond, thirty feet in diameter. He jumps exactly half way, and then half that distance, and then half that distance. And so on. How long does it take him to get there? The answer, as we all know, is ‘never.’

I often find continuous improvement a bit like this. As we seek constant incremental improvement we may negate that single, creative, explosive quantum leap which freshens up the whole organisation, or function and takes us a massive step forward. As organisations seek ever-evolving improvement, so the evolutionary process slows down, a bit like our frog on the pond. Often, a creative, revolutionary leap has to be built into the system or processes to prevent stasis, the stagnant pond of miniscule improvement.