A friend of mine makes chicken curry for a living, he makes a lot of it, in fact he makes 2 tonnes of it an hour, he could keep most of Birmingham fed.
The problem is that when you make that much curry, invariably you drop some. Last year he threw away well over £1 million worth.
Understandably the company he works for is concerned about the cost. His boss’s boss has suggested that they do some benchmarking to see if £1 million of curry is a lot, or not. They are busy looking for a curry benchmarking expert to tell them.
I wonder why they need a benchmark. It will either tell them that “yes, £1 million is a lot of curry” or “no, £1 million in the overall scheme of curry, is nothing to worry about”.
If it is the first answer they will be precisely back where they started, there will be no progress.
If it is the second answer they will sit back on their laurels and continue to throw £1 million away every year.
Benchmarks aren’t helpful; they are static and give a false sense of security.
Let’s be honest, you don’t need to be a first rate operations analyst to realise £1 million of curry is £1 million of curry, and if they don’t want it, I’ll gladly eat some of it for them.
Image by Leshaines123
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