It’s a request we hear often, and it’s easy to understand why.
So now feels as good a time as any to talk about benchmarks and why their perceived value often exceeds their practical worth.
Traditional benchmarks have long been treated as golden insights, commanding premium prices. But when you look closely, they’re often just expensive snapshots of the past, aggregated across organisations that might be nothing like yours. How much can you really draw from knowing that X company has y% fewer FTEs in Finance per 100k of revenue? This type of high level data point is either easy to explain away or dangerous to latch on to.
Today’s world moves too fast for that type of approach.
At Kindred, we use platforms that allow us to access open data to understand how organisations are actually operating right now – their capability mix, team structures, retention patterns, and talent flows. Through this, we can drill down to individual role level to understand the composition of jobs at millions of organisations – selecting only the ones that we want to understand in more detail.
Want to know if you have the right balance of Product capabilities compared to your closest competitors? Interested in whether your retention rates for key roles in Marketing match industry leaders? This real-time intelligence is more practical and often more insightful than traditional benchmarks, as you are using it to address specific questions.
But here’s the thing – even with better data, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of simply following someone else’s path.
Whether it’s traditional benchmarks or real-time market intelligence, external data should inform your thinking, not determine it. Your organisation’s unique context, challenges, and aspirations matter more than any comparison.
The most valuable insights come from combining current market intelligence with deep understanding of your own organisation. That way, you can make informed decisions about your future while staying true to what makes your organisation unique.
Someone else’s map might lead you to their destination, not yours.
We combine rich market intelligence with deep organisational understanding at Kindred. This means:
- Using real-time market insights as context, not prescription
- Understanding industry patterns while respecting your unique circumstances
- Learning from others’ journeys while charting your own path
- Validating directions without being bound by them
The real value comes from knowing how to weave external insights with internal expertise. After all, your team understands your organisation’s strengths, challenges and potential better than any benchmark can show.
