Best Practices: a good practice? By Afif Say

I cringe every time I hear “let’s create a platform to share

our best practices”. This subject has been hammered a lot

in the recent years. Let me state from the very beginning

that I am not suggesting that they are completely useless. I

do think that they may provide benefits in contexts 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

argument. 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.

Also the term is very 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 being 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, 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 used to get diminished significantly or lost

under the polish.

They had a “Best Practices” team at the headquarters in one of the companies I observed. Its function was to collect

best practices from all over the company and have it rewritten by professional technical writers, and then offer them

at a website with a searchable database. Despite its silo effort, the intentions were good. However the technical

writers’ technical knowledge (if anywhere up-to-date) did not originate from day to day practice but mostly from

official “product literature”. As a result the repository housed essays that confirmed the product literature and

nothing more. The technical sales people used those “best practices” as handouts for customers and referred external

search engines to reach more candid blogs written by practitioners for practical questions.

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 to tell you that 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 if not punishes. 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

Good luck with that quest. 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 than said. First of all it is a culture problem which requires guiding the organization towards

managing risks rather than fear of failure is a goal. That is out of the scope now. Just provide means and

environment where these stories are shared and distributed – like campfire stories. Use whatever is

practical, and capture them as narrative without changing or leading.

We had an audio program run by a very talented colleague. She used to gather product managers and sales people

from all over the world on a teleconference. She let them ask questions and discuss in a very candid setting, like a

radio show. They used to talk about “the good, the bad, and the ugly”. The recording would be pressed in CDs (MP3

players were not that popular then) and distributed to sales people. They could listen to it while driving or doing

other things. No need to say that the program was a great success, and revered as one of the best tools for the sales

professionals.

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 to contact if they need. Supporting networks where

people interact would be more effective than the official best practices programs.

Microsoft’s MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program (3) is very successful to recruit experts outside the

company to help others by sharing their expertise online. These experts are awarded their status (4000 out of

millions) depending on number and quality of their contributions in the past year, and they have to perform to keep

that as well. In return they receive perks from Microsoft, besides the title, respect and the advantages it provides.

The benefits are obvious for the company as well, as these happy volunteers of proven expertise relentlessly share

practical and prescriptive information for real-life questions.

I have to warn you that providing more than deserved focus for best practices or using them outside their

limited realm may cause more problems than the efficiency they may provide. 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.”

(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.

(3) MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Program: http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-

US/Pages/default.aspx

Originally published at: http://adnihil.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/best-practices-a-good-practice/