How to think about best practice
- David Creelman
- 15 時間前
- 読了時間: 3分
Imagine a colleague says “We should use assessment A”, and you reply, “Perhaps assessment B would be better.” Ok, all is in order. Now imagine the colleague saying “We should use best practice.” What are you supposed to say now? This dilemma is a hint that something is a bit fishy about best practices.
What best practices really are
A best practice is often something that worked somewhere else. Occasionally, they are backed by peer-reviewed research; however, the foundations are often shakier. The problem with relying on a best practice that worked somewhere else is that management is so context dependent that what worked elsewhere won’t necessarily work here. For example, the OKR (Objectives & Key Results) approach to performance management has had great success in some organizations but often fails if not adapted to the local situation.
If you’ve looked at management practices with a critical eye, then you already know relying on copying best practices is a poor approach.
A better way to consider best practices
Best practices provide one piece of evidence on what to do. You should gather any other sources of evidence, including interviewing stakeholders and experts familiar with your situation. You should assess the quality of evidence. Best practices from organizations of a different type, different culture, different tech infrastructure and so on, reduce your estimate of the quality of that evidence. It’s still evidence, just suitably downgraded in light of how different the organization that successfully used the best practice is from your own.
This is the standard approach of evidence-based management: collect all the available evidence, assess its quality and relevance to your situation, then decide based on an assessment of all the evidence. Ask whoever is proposing a best practice where it came from, how similar that organization is to yours, and what evidence exists beyond one success story.
Think of best practices as a hint, an idea, a starting point, rather than as an answer.
It’s all local problem-solving
Best practices are an example of an idea I often mention, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of Abstract Universalism whereby people latch on to a vague concept as the answer in all situations. Taleb argues that you usually need something more local. Coming up with an appropriate management practice is a problem-solving exercise where you devise a solution, rather than looking up the answer in a book.
Use best practices but use with caution
If someone says “We should use best practice” take that to mean “We should do our research and gather evidence”. Maybe they have a particular best practice in mind, but you can’t just accept that. Your answer can be “Yes, we should use best practices, let’s gather the evidence and do some thinking to determine what the best practice will be for us.”
Of course, there is another valid use of the concept of best practice. Sometimes your department will try to implement a practice, and every other department has some idea about how you should do things differently. In those cases, you might say “We decided to use best practice” which can dampen objections and get things moving forward. At least it will unless they’ve read this article and know the game.
A broader lesson
The best HR pros I know have a quiet, balanced reaction to claims such as “this is a best practice”. They don’t act like a cheerleader (“Yes, we must use best practices!”) nor as a cynic (“There are no best practices!”). Instead, they take the most chartable view of a claim which in this case could be “Let’s look at the evidence for what worked well elsewhere and consider how that will inform our decision.” There is an certain appeal to being a cheerleader or cynic, however leaders appreciate the solid, thoughtful approach an seasoned HR pro can bring.