By Zachary Winfield, Senior Vice President
A big part of almost any engagement with our clients is some version of benchmarking. It comes up in nearly every serious business plan or strategic discussion. We look at peer institutions and dig into things like attendance trends, revenue mix, staffing models, pricing approaches, and capital priorities. When it’s done well, benchmarking is incredibly useful: It keeps decisions grounded in reality and helps organizations avoid spending time and energy reinventing solutions that already exist.
That’s all good stuff. Important stuff.
But there’s a downside to benchmarking that doesn’t get talked about very often, and lately it has been hard to miss. When you benchmark against your peers, and those same peers benchmark against you, the logical conclusion is that the range of “acceptable” strategies narrows. Over time, the industry’s comfort zone gets smaller. Certain approaches become the norm. Others quietly get labeled as “risky.” Before long, anything that doesn’t come with a clear precedent gets dismissed before it ever has a chance.
It’s a little like a herd grazing in a wide-open field. Everyone keeps an eye on everyone else, which makes sense. There’s some measure of safety in numbers. No one wanders more than a few steps from the group, even when the grass just outside the circle looks a lot greener. Caution slowly turns into conformity. Safety turns into sameness.
You can see this happen in very practical ways. Pricing is a great example. Many organizations set admission prices by looking at what “comparable” institutions charge, maybe adjusting slightly for market size or cost of living. That’s a reasonable place to start, until it becomes the reason no one seriously explores different pricing models. Bundled experiences, dynamic pricing, simpler fee structures, or memberships that don’t look like everyone else’s often never get past the first conversation. The benchmark stops being a reference point and quietly becomes a ceiling.
To be clear, the answer isn’t to abandon benchmarking altogether. That would be irresponsible. These are mission-driven organizations with public trust to uphold, limited margins, and a lot of expectations riding on them. Risk needs to be thoughtful, not reckless.
But some level of risk isn’t optional — it’s necessary. Industries that avoid experimentation don’t stand still. They drift backward. Attendance levels off. Revenue streams become homogenous. Costs creep up. Eventually, organizations find themselves very well optimized for conditions that no longer exist.
The healthiest organizations we work with treat benchmarking as a guardrail, not a roadmap. They ask, “What does the data tell us about what’s typical?” Then they follow it up with, “Where might it make sense for us to be a little different?” They test ideas on a manageable scale. They challenge assumptions. They understand that not every experiment will work, and that’s okay. Real progress rarely comes from staying cozy in the middle of the pack. It comes from the few brave organizations willing to try something new, to learn from it, and even occasionally to fail.
So here’s the invitation: Experiment. Try that staff member’s idea that does not show up in anyone else’s portfolio. Pilot the program that makes you a little uncomfortable. Test the tactic that does not look like your peers’. Start small, learn quickly, and adjust as you go. The goal is not reckless risk. The goal is thoughtful curiosity.
Your peers’ experiences should help you avoid obvious mistakes. But benchmarking should not keep you from doing something genuinely interesting — something distinctive and alive. The institutions that will win the next era are the ones that have the courage to try.
