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July 20, 2005
Are Best Practices really the best you can do?
Best Practices or Benchmarking is a habit that is all over the place. I am coming across them constantly during my daily work day and it is amazing how much companies believe in it.
Best Practices basically means that you as a company look across your own industry and other sectors to find something that you could implement in your company. Something that a company in another sector or even your own is doing better than you.
This could be in a variety of areas - finance, supply chain, human resources, customer service - you name it, you get it.
You get curious about it and look into the deeper workings or processes. How the .... is this other company doing this? What are their processes, procedures, how do people behave - are some of the questions that you might start to explore.
May be you get it. The details. If it is another sector and you know the CEO, you can set up a meeting and share knowledge. Companies might share it with you, you know.
It might work, if you can customise it to your own situation - which might be difficult.
I wrote about it earlier, so may be you can take a look at this as well. Don't trust benchmarking and best practices too much, so. There are certain reasons to be suspiceous, really.
To be plain - you are not an industry leader when you benchmark or implement Best Practices. Until you complete the job, the world has moved on. Really. That simple.
Jack summarised this beautifully from an article in Marketing Profs (Login required).
And they write the following:
1.) They rarely work. A company's best practices work in the context of its business processes, culture, systems and people. Plucking a best practice and trying to graft it onto another organization will produce unpredictable results.
In one instance, a company forced its entrepreneurial salespeople to adopt a tightly controlled sales process, with automated tools for all large accounts. The company mandated the new process and system because it was touted as a best practice in sales force management. After a year of trial and error, the company's salespeople dumped the tool, complaining about declining sales productivity. For the company, it was a multimillion-dollar mistake.
2.) It's a follower's strategy. In an era of demands for innovative products and services, why give your customers recycled answers? A company that really wants a customer order process that looks like everyone else's is likely to lose the battle of market differentiation. Relying on best practices will doom your customers to mediocrity in the long run, and hurt your reputation as well.
3.) Change comes from within. People rarely respond well to implementing some other company's ideas. In fact, having best practices come down from on high usually causes resentment. Let people create their own solutions using their in-depth knowledge of the company's customers, suppliers, employees and processes. That will result in ownership of the ideas and determination to get results.
4.) They don't come with a manual. Business books and benchmark reports are full of snippets about best practices, yet they rarely explain what to do with them. You may have read that it's a best practice to process a customer product return in 24 hours, but there's little guidance for meeting that objective. It's also quite possible that the organizational change necessary for your customer to achieve the goal isn't even remotely feasible.
What to do then?
Well, use Best Practices as a starter to a great brainstorming session with your team. Don't use them as an end goal. Innovate, be creative. Find something new. Think outside the box.
Okay, these are just some flashy words, used in management circles. They need entries on their own. But think, feel and see my point. One way to start is to explore the ideas of your own employees. Ask them, include them in your sessions. Because they might just know what you need to know. But nobody asked them earlier. They are waiting for you to approach them.
Posted by Andreas at July 20, 2005 12:11 PM
Comments
hmm, you are making me think.... ;)
Posted by: belacan at July 20, 2005 01:02 PM