The Pragmatist's Guide to Best Practices

August 18, 2008 from Business Finance – “Are you suffering from best practicism? There is no doubt that best practices can be helpful. Why wouldn't an organization want to learn from others who've been down a similar path, as this can help to avoid costly mistakes and may yield quicker results. But taken too far, the pursuit of best practices can replace independent thought and actually have deleterious impacts on an organization. When this occurs, an organization is afflicted with what we call best practicism -- the errant belief that replicating other organizations' processes, strategies, and ideas is the route to success…

180 View – We often hear from consultants and vendors that they offer best practices. This article gives you a few reasons to be skeptical. Other causes for concern not mentioned in the article are applying best practices to organizations very different in size or to business processes that provide competitive advantage. We have written an article on Best Practices for CAmagazine that will be published in a couple of months.