The False Security of Best Practices
About 50 years ago, the term “best practices” was introduced in the manufacturing sector to describe why some companies were more successful than others. With a focus on efficiency, safety, and consistency, best practices became the way to describe the essential elements of the most productive and effective manufacturing processes.
Since 2000, the term “best practices” has ballooned in popularity and is used widely across many different sectors to mean “the way industry leaders handle this element of their business.” And while learning, following, and implementing best practices can be important in certain areas of any business, they can also create a false sense of success and security.
Here’s why – at their core, best practices are just the best way someone else is already doing something.
It’s true that best practices may predictably and successfully achieve a particular outcome, but you cannot expect best practices to produce different or better outcomes from what they’ve already produced elsewhere.
Using a proven approach that industry leaders have pioneered can seem like a good roadmap for success, right? But what happens when your industry is itself still striving to figure out what’s needed to make sustainable and long-lasting change?
In the social good sector, our organizations’ visions and missions claim a future that will be better and different from now. We dream of a world that does not yet exist, which means that current best practices probably aren’t enough to get us - and the people we serve - to where we want to be.
For nonprofit and social good organizations to fully realize our visions and successfully fulfill our missions, we can’t settle for what’s considered “best” right now – we must reach for better.
Getting better requires both innovation and revolution.
Innovation is an ongoing process that enables us to adopt a growth mindset and a focus on continuous improvement. It encourages us to fall in love with the problem, be curious, and take a constructively critical lens to our solutions.
Revolution focuses on upending the status quo with an entirely new – and potentially contrary – approach. It asks us to expand our thinking about what’s possible, be brave enough to make some really big changes, and admit we may need to unlearn some of what we’ve previously held true.
If the words innovation and revolution give you instant anxiety because they feel big and difficult – I’m here to tell you that (a) you’re not alone, and (b) you and your organization are much more capable of doing big, difficult things than you may think. As you think about what these practices can mean for your organization, here are some tips to get you started:
First, focus on creating time. Time is often our most precious commodity in the social good sectors, and it’s the one we give away too freely. When you think about areas where you or your organization can create or save time, be open to trying completely new approaches that will drastically reduce the time spent on certain functions, processes, or ways of working. Set an audacious goal for yourself – maybe you want to cut the time spent on that particular process in half. What would it take to get there? How could you make it possible? Check out our blog post on How to Make Time for Good Strategy for inspiration and tips or creating more time for what matters.
Next, ask for ideas. When you and your team have more time available, it’s easier to consider new ideas that may have felt exhausting or impossible when everyone’s calendars were double- and triple-booked. Ask your community, your team, your Board, and your supporters for their big dreams – the wild and wonderful ones that feel both exciting and a little scary – or about the ideas they haven’t shared before because they weren’t sure they were possible. In most cases, these ideas won’t be a perfect fit in their original state, but they can be a starting point and spark creativity and innovation.
Then, choose a strong starting place. In change management, the most important principle is that change is about people. These past couple of years, people all around the world have been through a lot of change, and so it can feel hard to balance people’s need for stability with the desire to push the boundaries and try something new. As a leader, you have to ask yourself, which of the ideas we’ve uncovered holds the most promise for supporting the people we serve and the people who power our organization? Put another way – what can we do really well that will feel like a meaningful win to our staff, supporters, and the people we serve? Starting with something that matters and that you feel confident you can make progress on will help everyone develop the mindset and practice the skills it will take to successfully implement bigger changes down the road.
In some cases, best practices can be helpful – especially if we’re looking to match an industry standard rather than exceed it. But true, lasting change requires both innovation and revolution – and the only way we’ll make our dreams a reality is to keep getting better at getting better.