One of the most emotionally draining places to visit in this country is a battleground. If you've ever been to the National Fire Academy, I find it hard to believe that you didn't visit Gettysburg to see the monuments. There, scattered out on the battlefield, are hundreds of statues and objects dedicated to the courage and bravery of combatants on both sides.

But there's a message that may go unnoticed; it has to do with Pickett's Charge. When Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett led his Confederate troops across a wide-open field against the withering fire of Union infantry, he expected to win. The attack was among the last elements of the Civil War's greatest battle.

The point where that charge stopped was the Confederate Army's farthest advance north. Ever since, it's been referred to as the "high-water mark of the Confederacy." In other words, that was as far as they got. The implication, of course, is that everything was downhill from there, and we all know what the history books say about the outcome of the Civil War.

The lesson here isn't who won or lost, it's that all organizations can aspire and achieve, but they won't survive unless they can sustain their efforts. High-water marks aren't as important as benchmarks, which you can measure and keep repeating over time to indicate that you're continually performing at a specific level. High-water marks win battles. Benchmarks win wars.

In the fire service, the concept of benchmarking is closely related to the idea of constant process improvement. In other words, it describes what we do and how well we do it over an extended period of time.

In other columns, I've talked a lot about the qualitative aspects of managing and leading fire protection agencies. Benchmarking is one of the tools that deals with measuring both the quality and quantity of fire services. Unfortunately, it's a technique that doesn't have a permanent home in many fire protection management plans.

As a chief, you should be looking into it to determine what its value might be for your organization. You might want to try "The Benchmarking Book" by M. Spendolini and "Benchmarking Basics" by James G. Patterson. Both are available from Chris Publications in Menlo Park, Calif. Or take a look at "Exceeding Customer Expectations: Quality concept for the fire service" by Randy Bruegman, published by the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, Fairfax, Va.

Why should you even consider benchmarking? Well, it's simple. Benchmarking helps your department focus on significant improvements rather than incremental changes. It allows you to identify real targets to fix, improving the credibility of your organization. Benchmarking moves you from the quantification of what you're doing to the qualification of where you're going.

W. Edwards Deming had an excellent quote identifying the benefits of benchmarking: "You do not have to do this; survival is not compulsory." One of the texts cited earlier, "Benchmarking Basics," lists 12 reasons why benchmarking is an organizational activity that you would benefit from using.

1) Help you meet customary requirements.

2) Adapt other industry practices for your own use.

3) Become more competitive.

4) Set more relevant, realistic and achievable goals for your organization.

5) Develop accurate measures of your own productivity.

6) Create support and momentum for internal cultural change.

7) Establish or refine your strategies.

8) Warn you of impending failure.

9) Test the effectiveness of your quality improvement program.

10) Re-engineer processes.

11) Promote better problem-solving and decision-making.

12) Provide an education and creative boost for your own personnel.

Now that I've done the cheerleading for the concept of benchmarking, let's get real. Benchmarking is hard work. There are a lot of people who don't want to do it because it takes a lot of energy, which has a tendency to distract you from other, more entertaining, things. Benchmarking, therefore, isn't something to take lightly. It's a commitment to take the organization in a direction of documentation that may be a little on the painful side, but remember the old adage "No pain, no gain."

When I first started reading about benchmarking, I frankly wasn't that impressed. Throughout my career, I've gone through everything from the old systems analysis approach to zero-based budgeting and all the other dance crazes that we've jigged along with. So why is benchmarking any different?

I would characterize benchmarking not as a dance craze but as a method of doing business. If you review the literature on this topic, you'll learn that it has a simple formula to it: pdca, a continuing cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act. Most importantly, this can be done on an individual basis, company basis, battalion basis, department basis or even a citywide basis. In other words, benchmarking isn't a thing so much as a thought process that can be used by anybody wanting to make an improvement.

I came to another conclusion about benchmarking while I was watching the Olympics. Frequently, I would hear the sports announcer refer to a mark being established by someone as "her personal best." That personal best became something of which she was greatly proud. She would do everything in her power as an athlete to keep hitting close to that personal best so she wouldn't be considered over the hill.

Well, benchmarking is another form of our own personal best. It's competitive to be sure, but more importantly, it's something that we're capable of doing if we really want to try hard enough to achieve it time after time. As fire officials, we want our personal best to be something that the organization can take pride in. Benchmarking is another way of keeping score so that the entire organization can take pride in what it accomplishes.

Setting benchmarks may not be an organization's high-water mark, but doing it with ease will let you go on to other challenges. Pickett survived the charge and lived to be an insurance agent in Virginia. If we as fire officials want to continue with the concept of professionalism, we need to ask ourselves: Do you want to be someone who benchmarks, or do you want to be someone who warms the bench?