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The Myth of Best Practices: Data at Best, Solutions at Worst

“Mark Twain used to say that it was possible to learn too much from experience. A cat, he said, that had squatted once on a hot stove lid would never sit down on a hot stove lid again. The trouble was that it would never sit down on a cold one either.”
— Isaac Asimov, Treasury of Humor

So-called “best practices” are at best, useful as data to put into the strategic planning process used to create an innovative organization, and at worst, solutions that are directly applied to the organization. This is our take on the wishful thinking that is embodied in the phrase, “best practices.”

For some time now, our collective skin has crawled when asked by our clients “What are the best practices for innovation” that they should be doing? The intention behind the question may well be a genuine curiosity for input or for thought starters about what they might modify in their own company. However, the unfortunate reality is that this desire to find a solution proven elsewhere that can be implemented in exactly the same way in their own organization is unrealistic and counter-productive. Sort of like slapping a three-inch denim patch on a five-inch tear in a black velvet jacket; the patch was purposefully designed to fix a two-inch hole in a pair of blue jeans. And while it might do the job of stopping the tear from getting worse, it probably won’t blend into the surrounding context nor thoroughly fix the problem. And it’s likely to upset those that care about the black velvet jacket.

Wisdom is all around, for us to adopt

This notion showed up three times in the space of a few days:

  1. A mention on the radio (9/10/07) about the counterinsurgency manual written last year by General Petraeus in cooperation with the US Army and Marines. NPR reported that the manual says, “There is no silver bullet. If [an approach] works in this province, it might not work in the next.”
  2. In a presentation sponsored by the University of Chicago GSB Innovation Roundtable, Tricia Sutton shared the Toyota Lean Product Development System and acknowledged that what works at Toyota likely won’t work at other companies because, like other companies, the Toyota culture is unique.
  3. A newsletter from the Organizational Development Network headlined, “Speak the Language your Clients Understand,” which to us meant, say it their way, not your own way, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.

One other clear influence on our thinking was a comment by David Horth of the Center for Creative Leadership following a presentation on the leadership style of Ernest Shackleton, a British South Pole explorer in the early 1900’s. When asked about the presentation, Horth said that one of the challenges of learning about leadership is that the temptation is always to look at a great leader (e.g. Shackleton, Curie, Washington, Welch, etc.) to see what they do and then imitate it. This is a doomed strategy. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and are trying to accomplish radically different things in dramatically different circumstances. One pundit noted that the only real similarity between Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela is that they each spent a lot of time in jail. Not a “best practice” we would encourage, even if they found it to be productive time for thinking and writing.

One of these companies is not like the other

Which is the point of why best practices should not be brought directly across from one company to another, since, to paraphrase a title by Bebe Moore Campbell, your business ain’t like mine. When you consider all of the variables involved in assessing a business: geography, industry, management, workforce, subsidies, competition, facilities, compensation, seasonality, vendors, customers/consumers, distribution, financial health, experience, and so on, how could a creative solution for Company A possibly work for Company B? No two companies are the same. How could we honestly expect what works in one business to directly translate to another? It can’t.

Innovation is hard work that by definition requires risk. It’s so difficult, that if we could figure out a way to not have to do it, to remove the burden inherent in innovating, we would. If we could avoid the risk by just imitating someone else’s successful strategy, wouldn’t that be great? The delusion is thinking that implementing someone else’s best practice is going to be easy and safe for you. In fact it won’t be any easier, and it is less likely to succeed than something you build yourself after having learned from others. So stop looking for specific solutions to transfer directly from another organization. Instead, start paying attention to best practices as a starting point, as input for the hard work that goes into devising a strategy to enhance innovation in your organization. Learn what works in other places, and don’t be surprised to find that one solution that works in one company is directly opposite to what works in another company! In our own practice, we’ve seen that a major kick-off of an innovation effort (complete with big presentations, announcements and fanfare) for a major consumer products R&D division was fantastically successful. A similar initiative in a pharmaceutical company was not (in fact, it seemed to demotivate the employees).

Reliance on best practices kills innovation

The unfortunate thing about best practices, benchmarking, fast-following, copying, or whatever it’s called, is that it’s used by some organizations as an alternative to innovation. Why bother doing the difficult work of thinking, looking internally, talking to stakeholders, asking tough questions or innovating when you can just do what that other company did? Save the time, money, effort, and brainpower, and just call it a day. Follow-on another company’s success and you’ll be successful, right? Not likely. And in fact it demotivates the company and tells people to stop thinking. And that’s a sure-fire way to kill the culture and climate for creativity, productivity, and innovation of an organization.

Learn or suffer the consequences

It’s not bad to learn from what worked and didn’t work with other organizations. Certainly our practice has been informed by our experience with hundreds of companies, and we’ve learned to the point that some of what we used to prescribe to companies we no longer do (see also, Humility). In fact, we sometimes frustrate potential new clients these days because we insist on doing an assessment of the organization and its climate for creativity, productivity and innovation prior to creating a proposal for how we’d help them develop the organization. It used to be much easier when we’d recommend that all companies do the same five things. In hindsight, after we began to implement the same five things, we would always have to modify the plan in order to achieve success.

So it’s not that you should stop looking at other companies, other industries, and other leaders. In fact, to stop looking is another doomed strategy. Instead you must learn from them and then build on, scale back from, adapt to, or ignore those strategies based on everything you know about your organization. The more tailored the strategy to the person or the organization, the greater the likelihood of success. Implementing a program that was a success at one company is equivalent to selling faint hope to suckers.

Success through learning, not through co-opting

Each individual and company is a rich mix of strengths and weaknesses in a distinct context. The sooner that is acknowledged and considered, the more rapidly effective strategies can be adopted, adapted, and succeed. In the words of Sam Walton, “I know what I know. I want to know what you know,” so I can learn and build on it. If you look at a “best practice” as a solution, failure is practically guaranteed. But if you look at it as data from which you can learn by applying your curiosity, success is far more likely.

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