竞争策略--Mckinsey+-+Best+Practice+Strategy.pdfVIP

22 S T R A T E G Y Best practice Best strategy Philipp M. Nattermann Benchmarking is an important way to improve operational efficiency, but it is not a tool for strategic decision making. When competitors all try to play exactly the same game, declining margins are bound to follow. “As a group, lemmings may have a rotten image, but no individual lemming has ever received bad press.” —Warren Buffett est practice. It may be the most readily recognized and widely used Bof all business management tools. And why shouldn’t it be? To execu- tives, modeling a company’s performance on its best-in-class competitor is an ambitious but attainable aspiration. To investors, the strategy is a guar- antee of the soundness of any company that embraces it. And to consultants, it is the tide that lifts every client’s boat. So why is it killing your margins? Everyone who follows business has seen the fat margins of growing young companies attract scores of new entrants, which eventually crowd the field and drive those very margins down. Why would top executives convert this regrettable fact of business life into a creed, especially when doing so simply hastens the endgame for everyone— first mover and Johnny-come-lately alike? They act as they do because they don’t understand that benchmarking is simply an operational tool. Instead, they all want to occupy the point on the strategic landscape that their most successful competitor has staked 1 out. Soon other competitors can be seen herding, lemminglike, around 1 See Eric D. Beinhocker, “On the origin of strategies,” The McKinsey Quarterly, 1999 Number 4, pp. 38–45. Philipp Nattermann is a consultant in McKinsey’s New York office. Copyright © 2000 McKinsey Company. All rights re