Benchmark Outside The Industry

One of the best ways to improve a business - whether in supply chain, hospitality, service, retail, etc?

Stop only studying your industry. Some of the most valuable ideas I’ve implemented didn’t come from logistics conferences or operations textbooks. They came from other industries.

Healthcare taught me about standardized checklists, error-proofing and triaging challenges. Hospitality taught me about customer experience, handoffs, and brand loyalty. Manufacturing taught me about visual controls, and the small components (parts) that go into the larger finished good (result). Technology taught me about agile iteration and debugging. Sports taught me about game day execution and building teams.

When you benchmark outside your lane, you stop recycling the same ideas everyone else is using.

Supply chain isn’t isolated. It’s a system of systems. So why would we only borrow from ourselves?

Some of the strongest operators I know are curious about everything:

How airlines board planes
How restaurants manage peak demand
How software teams deploy updates
How urban planners design cities

The question isn’t, “Does this look like *insert industry*?” The question is, “What principle is working here?” Because principles travel well - visibility, accountability, flow, feedback loops, and execution changes. The concept often translates.

If you want better results, widen the lens. Innovation rarely comes from staring harder at the same problem.