Is your best practice making you fail?

Your Friday Trigger Question (tq112)

Mar 17

Do you want ongoing success?

Then stop your so-called best practices.

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Why this matters: How do you know it is still the best practice? After all, best practice demands compliance, not experimentation and innovation.

What is a best practice? Merriam-Webster dictionary has the best(!) definition: "A procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption."

Adoption needs compliance: Work according to the best practice and you will earn a kind word. Don’t and you will get the boot.

How best becomes worse: When we enforce a way of working, learning congeals. We won't know if it is still the best practice if we discourage improvement.

But surely... Yes, there are industries and jobs where it is best to stick with a best practice. (Would you fly with a let’s-try-this-for-a-change sort of pilot?) Yet, someone in the past had to have the courage to experiment, and others had to practice the experiments, until the best bits became the agreed upon "best bits."

The best practice to practice: Remember that thing called change. It happens. Which is why you should ponder the possibility that your best practice might no longer be the best. It might need to change.