Organizational Success Measuring Organizational Success

Organizational Success MEASURING ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS Organizational success can be best measured with the help of some established, tested and tried tools including benchmarking, industry standards, business plans etc. Benchmarking is the most sought-after method for measuring success and there are numerous obvious benefits. For one it helps the firm identify where the actual problems and bottlenecks exist. It provides a realistic way of assessing a company's strengths and identifying its weaknesses.

Chris Gardner, a benchmarking guru, notes: '"Benchmarking takes the guesswork out of how an organization is doing performance-wise and provides realistic improvement targets," (Carlin). But while the benefits are many, benchmarking may not be able to correctly assess a firm's success because the standards used may actually be much higher than a small or medium-sized can ever hope to achieve. In other words, unrealistic comparisons may render benchmarking useless or at least inaccurate.

Similarly industry standards may also fail to consider a firm's size or its scope of operation when measuring it against industry's giants. Comparing Wal-Mart to the grocery store in your area is not only foolish, it is also a highly inaccurate way of fathering realistic information about your organization. While industry standards do help us determine the quality of a product or service, it may also restrict the entire industry.

"They [standards] can be inflexible and force producers to make products a certain way when other options are just as good, sometimes better, than what a standard dictates." (Pros and cons of standards, 1999) Organizational success may also be measured against company's business plan. Business plan is a blueprint of business's potential future and success. If it has not been met or if the reality is not as good as the plan had originally envisioned, there may actually be a problem with organization's performance.

But business plan is the least realistic or reliable method of measuring success because when a firm steps in the market and.