Benchmarking Clubs

A Guide for Small and Diaspora NGOs

INTRAC

PEER LEARNING PROGRAMME

 1. What are benchmarking clubs?
Benchmarking clubs can be defined as a group of people coming together to learn about
how to push their boundaries of performance to new and higher levels through mutual
support and peer challenge. Benchmarking clubs are a vehicle through which a group of
likeminded organisations seek to increase their levels of performance or set benchmarks in
the sector in which they operate. These clubs are driven by a desire to continuously improve,
innovate and achieve greater heights in terms of performance and contributing to good
practice in the sector or across sectors.

Benchmarking clubs are a core element of the Possible topic areas for benchmarking
Common Ground Initiative Peer Learning
Programme (CGI PLP). Benchmarking clubs • Advocacy and influencing
have been used successfully in the business, • Financial management
public and increasingly in the development • Operational management
sector. Two Benchmarking Clubs have been • Fundraising and communications
provisionally established for the PLP consisting
of a group of 3 - 7 people. • Governance and leadership
• Human resources management
The groups will meet every 6-8 weeks to • Monitoring and evaluation processes
discuss members’ performance related issues • Organisational strategy and programme
and reflect on processes that contribute to high planning
performance or organisational best practice. In • Partner capacity building
structured half-day sessions, participants will
• Managing partnerships
take it in turns to present their case on
performance and how they match best practice • Accountability to constituencies
applicable in the sector.

The presenter will indicate how his/her organisation measures up to best practice and high
performance levels in the selected area. Summaries of best practice drawn from surveys
and benchmarking studies in the development sector will be circulated to club members.

Each club will have a preparatory session to work on indicators of best practice and high
performance that will guide presenters when assessing how they perform in relation to high
levels of performance achieved by other organisations similar to them.

The members of the club will assist the presenter to think through some of the issues of how
they fall short to good practice and achieving high performance. Club members will pose
challenging and critical questions to enable the presenter to think outside the box in order to
clarify where the shortfalls are in the organisation, and provide information on good practice
and performance. The presenter will develop a ‘roadmap’ to address gaps in the
organisation that impede higher performance. Some key features of benchmarking are:

• People challenge and support each other

• A climate of confidentiality and openness is created within the group
• People seek solutions to real work issues and use real experience
• People are encouraged to be explicit

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 2. What can I get out of being part of one?
The benefits of being a member of a benchmarking club are that they:

• Help to prevent complacency and inertia within the organisation and its staff, by
setting ‘stretch’ goals and stimulating new ways to plan for the future
• Remove the need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ – by working together with other club
members on examples of best practice, organisations can avoid having to ‘start
from scratch’ in addressing challenging areas
• Lead to ‘outside-the-box’ thinking, encouraging organisations to look for ways to
improve that come from outside
• Force organisations to examine current processes, which can often lead to
improvement in itself
• Accelerate change and restructuring by using tested and proven methods and
creating a sense of urgency when gaps are identified
• Maintain focus on core issues of common concern
• Promote the emergence and evolution of a ‘learning culture’ in the organisation
• Allow the organisation to focus externally and constantly capture opportunities
and counter potential threats
• Overcome the ‘not-invented-here’ mind-set by offering evidence that ideas
invented outside the organisation can and do work.

3. How do they work?

The following is a process that a benchmarking club may follow in order to achieve the
maximum benefit from the sessions:

Preparatory session

• PLP consultants will provide brief summaries from selected literature and surveys on
best practice and distribute to participants beforehand.
• Introductions of participants, and introduction to benchmarking clubs (90 minutes).
• Participants select an area for benchmarking. This could be any of the Comic Relief
highlighted capacity building areas, or topics within these areas (20 minutes).
• Using the summaries distributed beforehand, as well as their own knowledge and
experience, participants discuss and agree on key indicators for high performance or
best practice in a given area (60 minutes).
• Members give an indication of the area they want to present on.

First Benchmarking Session

• A club member presents on how their organisation measures up to good

performance in the selected area making a case for their organisation and providing
evidence (40 minutes)
• Other club members interrogate the presenter in order to understand where the
presenters’ organisation is, the challenges they face and how they plan to improve on
performance. The interrogation will be informed by the good performance and
benchmark indicators. Club members reflect on the discussion and share their
understanding of the performance gaps existing in the presenter’s organisation. (15
minutes)

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 • The presenter provides an indication to club members what he/she thinks are the
performance gaps and how far they are from good practice in the area. The
presenter then indicates the issues to be dealt with and gives an indicative work plan
to take back to the organisation (10 minutes).
• A second presenter presents their case, following the steps as above.
• The whole group reflects on the session, and summarises what went well and areas
that need improvement.

Ongoing Benchmarking Sessions

• At the following meeting the first presenter from the previous session shares with
members the progress they have made and highlights any outstanding challenges
and how they plan to address them. They also share with members their experience
towards improving organisational performance. (20 minutes)
• Another club member presents on how their organisation measures to good
performance in the selected area, making a case for their organisation and providing
evidence (40 minutes)
• Other club members question the presenter as detailed above (15 minutes).
• The presenter to give an indication to club members what he/she thinks are the
performance gaps, indicates the issues to be dealt with, and gives an indicative work
plan, as detailed above (10 minutes)
• The second presenter from the previous session feeds back on their progress, as
above (20 minutes).
• Another presenter presents their case, following the steps as above (40 minutes + 15
minutes + 10 minutes)
• The whole group reflects on the session, and summarises what went well and areas
that need improvement.

4. What does the presenter have to do?

The presenter speaks about the selected area, highlighting how their organisation performs
in comparison to high performance and best practice. He or she will:

• Present on the selected issue and giving a background on it, and reasons why the
issue is important
• Give an indication of how far their organisation is from achieving best practice and
high performance as understood in the sector
• Indicate how they measured the indicators agreed for performance and best practice
• Highlight the challenges they have faced to improve performance, how these
challenges have been handled, and reasons for remaining areas in which the
organisation still lags behind best practice.
• Receive questions from members and address those that he/she is comfortable with
• Decide on the issues and priorities to take forward to improve performance and share
these with members
• Update members on progress at the next meeting

5. What makes a good performance issue?

For the purposes of the benchmarking club sessions, performance issues that are to be
presented by club members should relate to organisations’ internal functioning to make them
effective in achieving their goals, or internal processes that impact on performance and

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organisational efficiency. For example an issue could be one of the capacity building areas
identified in the OCAT assessments. These include governance and leadership,
management and financial systems, inclusive programme design and implementation, and
M&E systems.

It would be important for the presenter to be conversant with the issue that he/she will
present and that he/she can act fairly as a representative of the organisation in regard to the
issue being ‘benchmarked’. It is expected that the presenter will take responsibility for the
actions aimed at improving the organisation’s performance and is in a position to influence
the decision making processes within the organisation in the area being discussed.

6. What do members do?

Club members who are not presenting are expected to listen attentively and after the
presentation of the case ask questions. Non-presenting members should:

• Listen actively and attentively

• Watch for non-verbal cues, such as body language, hesitations
• Be attentive to the feelings as well as the words of the presenter
• Do not intervene (unless an agreed part of the process)
• Ask questions that encourage the presenter to understand the problem for
him/herself more clearly
• Be prepared to probe and challenge the presenter as critical friends
• Be always supportive, encouraging and empathetic
• Give feedback appropriately, honestly, and with discretion
• Make reference to known good performance and practice
• Observe the agreed ‘ground rules’ for conduct of club members

The aim of the discussion is to assist the presenter in: having a critical appreciation of
factors contributing to high performance and best practice, and enabling him/her to critically
reflect on the challenges of achieving higher performance.

Asking the right questions is important as it will help the presenter to challenge his/her own
assumptions, and be open to new ideas to help his/her organisation move towards best
practice, and make a contribution to improving performance in the organisation. Please refer
to the Action Learning Sets Guidelines for more on listening skills and how to ask questions
in this context.

7. What does the facilitator do?

In the benchmarking club, the role of the facilitator is to hold the session together and allow
for effective discussion and participation of the club members. The facilitator will try to
ensure that:

• The discussion remains focused on the subject matter of the day

• Club members’ questions help the presenter to appreciate gaps in performance
• Club members pose challenging questions to enable the presenter to think outside
the box
• Club members see themselves as ‘critical friends’ and are able to tap into resources
indicating good practice elsewhere
• That the session is constructive and productive

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 8. What are the ground rules of meetings?
To enable the benchmarking club members to build on their knowledge of good performance
and practice the following two basic conventions or ‘ground rules’ have proved most useful.

i. Only One at a Time (OOAAT)

Only one person at a time in the set presents an issue. The others give attention and help,
entirely for her/his sake. The space belongs to the problem presenter. The presenter’s
perception of the issue will be enriched by critical questions posed by other members,
probing deeper the issue, posing strategic questions to enable presenter to have a bigger
picture of the issue presented and compelling the presenter to think outside the box. The
members can draw on experiences of best practice and give examples of high performance
achieved in one’s organisation or elsewhere in a dispassionate manner that could apply in
the case of the presenter. The problem-presenter alone is in focus.

ii. Critical Friend Approach

In the benchmarking club, members are seen as ‘critical friends’ to each other to support the
process of becoming high performers and setting benchmarks for best practice. Members’
questioning should be challenging, in order to widen the horizon of thinking through the
issues that impede higher performance in presenter’s organisation. Members do not have to
agree with what is presented and could critically explore issues with a view of encouraging
new ways of thinking and taking risks, giving examples of good practice and performance.

Members can also come up with other ground rules to ensure benchmarking sessions are
effective.

9. What is needed for Benchmarking Clubs to work well?

There are a number of factors to consider in order to ensure that members benefit from
attending benchmarking club sessions.

Members representing their organisations on the benchmarking club must have full support
of their senior managers for the sessions to work well. This will ensure that members are
able to take time to make the necessary preparations when presenting their case and will
have responsibility to follow through with action plans to implement identified changes.

Members should be in a position to articulate processes underlying performance (for

example, processes in delivering a specific service), in order to identify weaknesses in their
systems in comparison to best practices in processes of high performing counterparts in the
sector.

A set of indicators for best practice and high performance should be in place to guide
members in setting benchmarks that participants are expected to work towards. In selecting
the indicators of best practice, it is important to identify and select indicators that are
appropriate to the sector in which you are working.

Benchmarking findings must be treated as confidential to the individuals and organisations

involved. Such information must not be communicated to third parties without the prior
consent of the Benchmarking partner who shared the information.

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 10. Where do Benchmarking Clubs come from?
Robert C. Camp is considered the inventor of the Benchmarking Method, which was
developed during his time work at Xerox. He wrote his first book on benchmarking in 1989
and the benchmarking methodology has been used widely in the business world. Robert
Camp outlined in his book the process of learning from and adopting practices from
competitors who are high performers.

You can read an interview with Robert Camp about the origins of benchmarking here:
http://www.cforc.org/newsdata/news.asp?StoryID=76

Further Resources for Benchmarking

INTRAC (2010) Organisational Capacity Assessment Tool
http://cgi-africa.org/resources/

The NIDOS effectiveness tool

http://www.nidos.org.uk/downloads/NSATdownload_1.pdf
http://thegoodpractisecompass.ning.com/page/the-principles

Practical Quality Assurance System for Small Organisations

http://www.oneworldtrust.org/csoproject/images/documents/INTL13a.pdf

International Statement of Ethical Principles in Fundraising

http://www.oneworldtrust.org/csoproject/images/documents/INTL20.pdf

Accountability Self-Assessment for Staffed Private Foundations

http://www.oneworldtrust.org/csoproject/images/documents/uploading%20from%20MH/USA
M27.pdf

Keystone Performance Surveys: NGO Partner Survey 2010

http://www.keystoneaccountability.org/sites/default/files/Keystone%20partner%20survey%20
Jan2011_0.pdf