Personal Benchmarking

There is an often misunderstood concept in management that will work wonders for you if you only learn how to apply it. It is the difference between feeling helpless and being in complete control. It is the difference between longing for success and actually achieving your goals. This technique is called "personal benchmarking."

Personal benchmarking is the process of consciously counting all of your small achievements that add up to big success. It is an attitude that encourages you to take pride in even the smallest steps in the right direction. There is an old Chinese proverb that says, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Personal benchmarking emphasizes the importance of that first step and every small one that follows.

Let me give you an example. I have a friend who wants to be a speaker and his progress seems to be at a firm standstill. He doesn't trust the personal benchmarking process, and because he's not yet in great demand as a speaker, he sees himself as a failure.

My friend is blinded by his inability to see the importance of the small steps that lead to the big goal. Success in any job, field, or career is not now, and never will be an overnight event. It is the cumulative effect of chugging away every day with your eyes clearly focused on the anticipated result.

It's the phone calls you make, the letters you write, the emails you send, and the new connections that you establish every day that count. If you don't do these things, you'll never be able to get where you want to be. To consider the time before you achieve success as a failure is like considering the time you are alive as days you are dying. It's narrow-minded, backwards thinking.

One of the main reasons why so few people in our society are successful is because they are impatient. People want instant success and instant gratification. If they don't receive results immediately most people just give up. Most businesses fail because the owner gives up before the business has a chance to prosper. Most investments fail because the investor wants an immediate return and sells the investment before it has a chance to grow.

A few years ago I was struggling to finish a project for a prospective client. It was two o'clock in the morning and I was tired. I was also frustrated because I was doing work on speculation. There was no guarantee that I would ever be paid for it.

Suddenly I realized that there was only one thing that I could do that would guarantee that I would never be paid. I could quit working. Only by quitting would I guarantee that I would receive no compensation for my efforts. I might add that it wasn't until a year later that I finally received a check in payment for my efforts and I have been receiving residual payments ever since.

Personal benchmarking is a wonderful process of many small things becoming one complete, fulfilled goal. We can't always have today what we want and need, but if we learn to do the small things, then the big things will take care of themselves.