Tools Of The Devil – Best Practices
03.16.2008 | Chris BaileyBest Practices. Even the term sounds like easy success, doesn’t it? What could possibly go wrong if you implement what works for other organizations in your own organization? Yes, the lure of proven strategies has a very strong appeal. But I’m going to challenge folks to stuff some beeswax in their ears when they hear the sirens sing of the temptations of best practices. Like Odysseus discovered, the song is enchanting until you realize that it leads to a grisly demise.
You may be asking whether I’m overblowing the dangers of best practices. You may have used best practices in the past and they’re working out just fine for you and your organization. To you I say “Congratulations!” and then, “Where’s your next great idea coming from?” Far from encouraging organizations to embrace their inherent uniqueness and potential greatness, best practices merely condone a smallness that’s ultimately uninspiring to your customers and employees.
Best Practices encourage the belief that there is just one true path.
Ever hear a consultant or industry peer tout best practices like they were written in stone and brought down from the mountain by Moses himself? They preach that all someone has to do is simply install these practices into their organization and they’ll score easy rewards. They’ll argue quite strongly that to ignore best practices is to needlessly “recreate the wheel” and waste valuable resources. It’s enough to make you feel like a sucker if you don’t immediately sign up to learn as many best practices as possible. But let’s be frank…the sucker turns out to be the blind adherent to the religion of best practices. Hopefully, this isn’t you.
One typical response I get from folks in favor of best practices is that you can take a practice and then blend it into your organization’s unique situation. This may be true, except how many times do organizations really put this notion to work? It’s kind of like buying an antique dresser that needs some hard work to really show off its value. You get it home but instead of immediately getting to work at stripping, sanding, and staining the piece, you leave it in the garage as a “someday” project because all of that refinishing work is time-consuming. Five years later, you donate the dresser to Goodwill in the same state in which you bought it. So much for that “valuable” purchase.
Best Practices instill the notion that solutions are out there.
As someone who strongly believes that most organizations grossly underutilize the expertise and knowledge of its employees, the notion that innovative new ideas and answers to thorny problems exist out there drives me crazy. This lack of confidence in and understanding of the organization’s internal resources is a chronic failure of management. Rather than wondering what new practices a competitor is using or new ideas a leader in another industry is generating, get curious about building innovation inside your organization.
So toss away all those advertisements that want you to learn how to do things the Toyota way. Guide your consultant toward the door if they insist that their new program works for companies like Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble, and Home Depot. And for goodness sake, stop focusing so much of your time on benchmarks just so you can compare your organization to others in your industry.
Encourages mimicry and mediocrity.
Finally, since when does being the best mean being just like everyone else? When you buy into best practices, you’re accepting the notion that it’s advantageous to your long-term business health to do things like everyone else. And you’re damning your business to a legacy of ordinariness. How long do you think you’ll last with that type of mentality?
Instead, consider the hard work of being remarkable. One of my inspirations in my own attack on best practices is Jeff De Cagna. A few years ago, he wrote a great blogpost called Be Original. It’s aimed at non-profit professional associations but the core of his message applies across any organization: “True success and true greatness come from daring to do what others can’t do or won’t try.”
So, the next time someone approaches you with the benefits of best practices, ask yourself, “Do I want my organization to be replicable or remarkable?” Your answer will speak volumes about your own leadership.
8 Responses to “Tools Of The Devil – Best Practices”
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Great post, Chris! I’m reading through an advance copy of Peter Block’s new book, “Community: The Structure of Belonging” and I came upon a quote that seems related to this discussion. Block is talking about why his book doesn’t include “success stories”:
“There is no need for more benchmarking of where the world is working. The reason is partly that we have already heard all the stories, and partly—and more important—that narratives of success give us hope and places to visit, but do not build our community. Social fabric and successful communities simply cannot be imported. What works somewhere else ends up as simply another program here, which might be useful but does not shift the fundamentals we are after.”
He’s talking about building community, but I think his comments also relate to what you’re saying about mimicry and mediocrity. At any rate, I thought it might be of interest to you!
Thanks, Lisa…absolutely dead-on! Peter Block is another of my inspirations and has been a major influence in how I approach my organizational work. Let me know your overall thoughts of his new book when you’re finished.
Chris, you’ve nailed one of my favorite areas for criticism: benchmarking.
I did an article or a post some time ago, but my take on it has been this: Why would you compare yourself to an organization whose culture is different, mission and values are different, and that is comprised of, well–different people. It’s an exercise in futility. And by the time you are finished the exercise, their–and your–circumstances have changed.
My two cents: if you are going to look at successful people or companies, find the underlying principles that they are adhering to; not what they are doing.
The very act of figuring out the difference between the two will be time well spent.
Steve
Steve, your two cents – if adjusted for insight and wisdom – are worth quite a bit more than that. Your suggestion of finding the underlying principles guiding the person or organization is brilliantly put. I’ll go a searchin’ for your blogpost…I can’t wait to read more of your thoughts on this.
This post reminded me so much of the time I spent in corporate HR. So little innovation, so much benchmarking. It was not inspiring. Thanks for this post and for helping to remind myself how fortunate I am to innovate to my heart’s content now, as a solopreneur!
Hiya Heather, you’re welcome! Your comment identifies something that continues to sadden (and at the same time embold) me: organizations losing innovative thinkers due to their reluctance to dump old ways of doing things. Benchmarking HR processes is just one of these things that seemed good to do a while ago but its time to move on. But then as long as this reluctance and lack of innovation exists, we still have potential work waiting for us, eh?
Good post, Chris, and I see why you pointed me here in our Twitter conversation on “algorithms.”
Echoing Steve re “underlying principles” above, I would suggest a distinction here between two types of best practices:
1. Best practices and benchmarking as a rote, Bisquick-recipe method. There’s no fundamental rethinking of habits or modus operandi, and therefore there’s no struggle and growth for the organization or the individuals within it.
2. REAL best practices, which will have to go by another name since “best practices” has been so corrupted. “Underlying principles” is a good name for it; “algorithms” might be another.
In this version, you look to Toyota NOT because you entertain the fantasy that you’ll follow six simple steps and be like them 18 months from now, but because you acknowledge the reality that Toyota is quantitatively and qualitatively superior to its competitors, and that it didn’t — couldn’t have — gotten there by accident. So you look for the underlying principles of operating without waste and overburden; you think hard about AND IMPLEMENT programs to solicit worker suggestions aggressively; you ENACT measures to ENSURE that improvements to processes are implemented every single day.
As I said in my post about “real advice” for companies, version #1 of best practices — the “tips-’n'-tricks” version is easy but useless. Version #2 implies — REQUIRES — actual changes in behavior, and not at some far-off future date, but starting right now. That makes it hard.
Which is why most people run away from it, and why many companies allow themselves to fall prey to version #1 of best practices.
And then they wonder why they never get better.
Tim, I want to make sure that I capture your blogpost here because there is a strong connection:
http://www.hooversbiz.com/2008/12/05/what-real-advice-would-you-give-your-company/
You’re absolutely right on about the distinctions and corruption of the positive potential of best practices. Too much “follow-the-leader” and “me-too” going on the be effective.
Look forward to playing around with this algorithms idea with you. Maybe we can shift the dialogue a bit so that organizations *can* get better.