Best Practices May Not Be Best

Best practices serve many well as it saves us time from reinventing the wheel and spending time on trial and error to find the best way to do something. Organizations implementing CMM or Six Sigma use these models to help them create the best model for their organization. These models are general because the creators know that every organization is different.

In Best Practices: Imitating others may actually do more harm than good, the author helps leaders determine whether or not a best practice is the right thing to do. The article says that best practices interfere with innovation. I don’t agree. That’s where an organization implement a change management process — giving people the opportunity to submit better ways of doing “what must be done” — the purpose of best practices.