Do we use best practices out of place or in the right context? This article discusses that.

I cringe every time I hear “let’s create a platform to share our best practices.” This subject has been hammered a lot in recent years. Let me state from the very beginning that I am not suggesting that they are completely useless. They may provide benefits in context when done right. Yet I still feel the urge to share my perspective from personal and professional observations, resulting in what believe to be an evolutionary approach. I promise that I will not introduce a yet another strategy matrix showing best practice of best practices. I don’t know or believe in any.

“Best Practices” is a misnomer.

I don’t know who came up with the term first, but it is a misnomer since a superlative is an exclusive statement. Do they make sure that this practice produces significantly better results than alternatives? Have they done any comparison at all? Is there a room for improvement or this is the end all be all pill that we should swallow?

“Best Practices” are worthless without the context

Without the context best practices may become useless or even harmful. And the context is not just a few environmental conditions.

The term is also arrogant, as it implies that it cannot be improved: modify this and you end up in… Where is the room for growth?

I know marketing people won’t like it, but if we switch to some moderate term like “good practices” or “working examples” it would be more palatable.

“Best Practices” end up being too sanitized in practice

I cannot speak for others, but in the business environments I have been exposed to, “best practices” ended up as extremely sanitized case studies, usually written by professional writers. First, they have lost their candid narrative which may have carried a lot of value from one practitioner to another. By involving a professional “translator”, most of the valuable information was lost in translation. Second, the “rewriting” process turned them into sanitized messages (part of it may be due to legal concerns), intended by the “authority”, or the “espoused theory” as described by Argyris and Schön (1). In the end the reader’s need to obtain practical “theory-in-use” information is diminished significantly or lost under the polish.

Is this the best we can do?

David Snowden (2) argues that “avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitation of success”. I tend to agree with this. Given that avoidance of failure better increases chances of survival than chasing success. Also – as we have all observed, stories of (others’) failures spread faster than stories of success. However, I have yet to find a first-hand research/report that demonstrates these arguments (any help here is greatly appreciated).

Nevertheless, there are no or very few sanctioned ways of sharing failure in organizations, although that knowledge would provide significantly more value. Unfortunately, contemporary organizational culture does not encourage this type of behavior rather it is punished. This sounds like a funny paradox as sharing stories of failure would provide evolutionary advantage to the society (or organization), yet for the members of the community (at least in the immediate term) would be disadvantageous. Obviously, something is wrong.

Best practice for best practices

With tongue and cheek I say good luck. However, my healthcare and information/knowledge management experience taught me to be a pragmatist, and I will share some thoughts for the very limited use of best practices.

Capture and share whatever you can – not only the success stories.

This is easier said than done. First of all, it is a culture problem which requires guiding the organization towards managing risks rather than fear of failure. How to do this may be a subject of a future discussion. Just provide means and environment where these stories are shared and distributed – like campfire stories, or water cooler chats. Use whatever is practical and capture them as narrative without changing or leading.

Use “Best Practices” where they shine

Prescriptive information works best in ordered systems, such as manufacturing, or engineering where you can define elements. Providing the context data along with it improves the repeatability of the “best practices”. Rather than sanitizing them, provide background information and keep at least some narrative. Attributing the source, if you can, may allow people contact if needed. Supporting networks where people interact would be more effective than the official best practices programs.

And Keep Them limited

Providing more than the deserved focus for best practices or using them outside their limited realm may cause more problems than the efficiency they may provide.

In my previous essay “Too Well Adapted to Survive?” I discussed how reducing variety in an organization can reduce its adaptive capacity. Allowing officially sanctioned/imposed best practices to sneak out of its limited realm – mainly protocols and procedures – may implicitly force people to adopt homogenous behavior – blinding them to other environmental variables, even to dramatic changes. As David Snowden points out: “the efficiency focus of best practice harms effectiveness because it assumes repeatable past patterns of cause and effect. Driving out inefficiencies increases vulnerability to new threat as the adaptive mechanism of the complex system has been withdrawn.”

Let people share and interact without fear, create an environment where valid points, good stories (failure or success) are amplified, not re-written. Promote risk management, not the fear of failure.

Footnotes:

1. Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (1974) say that people have two different “theories of action”: Espoused Theory: These are the words people respond with when they are asked about what they would do in a certain situation, guided by what they think others would like to think about them. Theory-in-use: the theory implied by people’s actual behavior.
2. David Snowden, an academic, consultant, and researcher on knowledge management. He is the founder of Cognitive Edge. He has written lots on this subject.