HUMAN CAPITAL ANALYTICS: THE LEADING EDGE OF MEASUREMENT 171
whether it is for weeks, months, quarters, or years, we usu-
ally want to know what it will look like going forward. If
something is on an upward or downward slope of, for exam-
ple, 5 percent over the past three years, is it safe to say it
will be 5 percent next year? We do this with benchmarking
all the time.
Assuming or extrapolating a past trend into the future is
risky. A straight line extrapolation would assume that the
future will be a mirror of the past. You could do that with
some confidence in the 1970s and 1980s, but since then it
has become highly unlikely. Volatility and constancy are
polar opposites. This is why I believe that benchmarking has
lost most of its value since the arrival ...