The best way to differentiate is to find the metric your competitors have neglected and double down on it — reverse benchmarking.
Sutherland introduces 'reverse benchmarking' — rather than copying category leaders, find what everyone in the category neglects and do it spectacularly well. He illustrates with Will Guidara's restaurant turning mediocre coffee into a signature, Apple asking emotional questions in a tech-obsessed industry, and Buc-ee's transforming women's restrooms into a competitive advantage. ✦ AI generated
Rory Sutherland · My First Million · 2026-07-27 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 11:51
I call this reverse benchmarking. In other words, you look at all the metrics that everybody cares about in the category. You find a metric that's been completely and ridiculously neglected and you double down on that thing. Now I first came across this in Will Gdara's fantastic book, Unreasonable Hospitality. He goes to the number one restaurant in the world. All of his team say, 'We ought to copy this. We ought to do that thing with the napkins. I really like what they do in the bathrooms with the scented jawsticks. Let's copy that.' And Gdara goes, 'Not going to copy any of that.' Because two, one, we can't afford to. And two, they're already doing it. What I want to know from you is what out of this evening at the world's best restaurant, a Michelangar restaurant somewhere. What was a bit disappointing? What was a bit me? And they said the coffee was a bit average, you know, it was nothing special. and the beer drinkers, probably the chefs who'd gone along, got treated really crappily, shabily compared to the wine drinkers. So he goes back to his own restaurant and he appoints a coffee sleier and a beer sumelier. And he says, 'Your job is not just to benchmark against these people, it's to hit it out of the park.' Now, if you think about it, taking something that's bad about the category, not not saying we need to raise our level to the category average, but instead doing it spectacularly well, something that nobody's expecting. That was what Apple did, I would argue. Okay. That's what Bies did. I don't know if you're Bies. Where where are you in the US? Yeah, I lived in Texas. We we we're big Bucky guys. Yeah. Okay. It basically started with an insight around women's restrooms. Now, you could have just had averely clean women's restrooms and you would have benchmarked. No, no, no. They're like the bloody hall of mirrors at Versailles, right? I mean, I haven't been in them, but the men's restrooms are pretty good, but the women's ones are apparently sensational.
verbatim transcript · starts at 11:51
11:40would be happy looking at themselves. >> And it's actually, by the way, it gets quite philosophical this because you suddenly realize that literally trillions of dollars of effort are invested by businesses every year in pursuit of metrics which the customer may not notice or care about. Whereas at the same time, no money is spent on things which would actually make a huge difference. There are relatively easy wins here for both government and
12:11the private sector in saying I'll give you an example of this. So I call this reverse benchmarking. In other words, you look at all the metrics that everybody cares about in the category. You find a metric that's been completely and ridiculously neglected and you double down on that thing. Now I first came across this in Will Gdara's fantastic book, Unreasonable Hospitality. He goes to the number one
12:35restaurant in the world. All of his team say, "We ought to copy this. We ought to do that thing with the napkins. I really like what they do in the bathrooms with the scented jawsticks. Let's copy that." And Gdara goes, "Not going to copy any of that." Because two, one, we can't afford to. And two, they're already doing it. What I want to know from you is what out of this evening at the
12:53world's best restaurant, a Michelangar restaurant somewhere. What was a bit disappointing? What was a bit me? And they said the coffee was a bit average, you know, it was nothing special. and the beer drinkers, probably the chefs who'd gone along, got treated really crappily, shabily compared to the wine drinkers. So he goes back to his own restaurant and he appoints a coffee sleier and a beer sumelier. And he says,
13:18"Your job is not just to benchmark against these people, it's to hit it out of the park." Now, if you think about it, taking something that's bad about the category, not not saying we need to raise our level to the category average, but instead doing it spectacularly well, something that nobody's expecting. That was what Apple did, I would argue. Okay. That's what Bies did. I don't know if
13:42you're Bies. Where where are you in the US? >> Yeah, I lived in Texas. We we we're big Bucky guys. >> Yeah. Okay. It basically started with an insight around women's restrooms. Now, you could have just had averely clean women's restrooms and you would have benchmarked. No, no, no. They're like the bloody hall of mirrors at Versailles, right? I mean, I haven't been in them, but the men's restrooms
14:01are pretty good, but the women's ones are apparently sensational. And my argument is that, you know, if you, let's say you're a hotel, okay, everybody will focus on the rack rate and the this and the size of the room and, you know, so on and so forth. Have you ever had a even in a really expensive hotel, a laundry experience that isn't a bit of a pain in the ass?
14:23You know, you got to fill in a form, you got to put it in a bag. By the way, if you get your laundry back, they never replace the bag the second day. So, if you want a second lot of laundry, you've got to ring up and ask for another bag and another form. Okay? Now what would happen if a hotel if I stayed in a hotel