Inside the Best Practice Mirage

I came home one day  (much to the dismay of my mother) covered in mud from head to toe.  There wasn’t a spot on my body that wasn’t dirty.  When she asked what happened, I went into a lengthy story that could be summed up as: I did what everyone else did because they said it was the best idea.  You know what she said because all of our mothers said it a thousand times.  “If your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?”

A few decades later (we won’t mention how many), I found myself in the corporate world jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.  In corporate vernacular they called it “Best Practices”, but the basic concept was the same.  If we are told it’s the best idea, the best process, the pathway to success, we follow the direction.  The issue with this is, we don’t ever stop to ask why we consider these things “best practices”.  What does that even mean?

Think about it.  When we say something is a best practice, how do we know it is?  The fact of the matter is, we don’t.  If you ask a high performer what they do to get high performance, they often don’t know.  They can tell you a philosophy, an opinion, or a personal preference.  But they can’t exactly tell you what they do that is unique and different from the average performer. 

Here is the key, best practices can only be determined with contrast.  The contrast between average and high performers will allow the high performance routines and practices to standout.  And, here’s the kicker – it is usually not what the high performer describes as the difference markers because they can’t see the patterns that outline the true differences makers between good and great.

Instead, we need to isolate high performance and determine what routine(s) that high performance is engaged in that an average performance is not. We need to figure out what are observable practices and what routines are actually replicable? Your goal as a leader should be to spot which things in your business are working really well, put a magnifying glass on those behaviors and processes, and replicate them time and again across your organization. Your high performers probably don’t even know themselves that they’re doing something worth shining a light on. But there are ways you can glean really valuable insight from them anyway.

Here’s what I mean.

1. Maybe they’re born with it

Just like Bubba Watson can’t tell you how he does what he does on the golf course, your top performers are often just naturally good at what they do, which makes it hard for them to explain it to you. It’s called unconscious compliance.  Seek them out, observe their habits and their successes. See if you can spot a pattern or an action or a decision they make that leads to their exceptional performance.

1. Always follow the rules (NOT!)

Often, high performance lies within the unsanctioned practices.  Organizationally, we have a bias to confirm that people are following the rules. But rule following can sometimes stifle creativity and innovative thinking, as well as calculated risk-taking. There’s no doubt you have folks that don’t follow all the rules – they tiptoe outside the lines on a hunch or a gut feeling. A lot of times, these people are right – they achieve a better result than they otherwise would have but they’re afraid to tell the tale for fear of being admonished. The fact is that unbridled success will come in figuring out which “broken rules” are producing great results.

1. Take a clear and blurry look

Leadership is too far away to see the practices - they mainly only see the end results but really have no idea how they were actually achieved.  On the other hand, individuals are too close to the practices to get a clear view of what is happening from a macro perspective. But there is so much value in both points of view. You need to dial in 20/20 vision to recognize the patterns of high performing practices across multiple locations (far-sighted) while simultaneously understanding the details of what those practices are (near-sighted).

Once you spot those that are doing something right (even if it wasn't sanctioned), you can take what you learn from them and start to show others in your organization how to do the same. We are not really interested in sharing a best practice, but scaling it.  A true best practice should be rapidly scalable and isn’t unique to an individual or circumstance.  Always be on the lookout for what’s working most and make those behaviors, philosophies, acts and ideas contagious to the rest of the organization.

 In the end, the best practice sharing’s title is misleading. They are not best, rarely practices versus opinions/attitudes, and sharing has little value; it is scaling that drives team and organizational high performance.