People may not feel the need to improve their performance if their aspirations are too low. They may not realize how poorly they're doing compared with their competitors (e.g., outsourcing). Or they may not realize how much more is expected of them.
The answer is to measure people's performance against targets that are based on competitive benchmarks.
Internal prices and service levels should regularly compared to external competitors, and the results of these benchmarks should play a role in the providers' performance appraisals. This creates a continual force for efficiency.
Targets (benchmarking) is a subset of the broader topic of metrics.
