Question: What is meant by the term “best practice?”
Answer: The term “Best Practice” is an industry-wide description for approaches, processes, or procedures which have been proven to deliver exemplary results in areas critical to an organization’s mission, or purpose. “Best” is not meant to imply the ultimate, singular, and only preferred way to achieve a result; rather, it is intended to mean one of potentially many approaches used by industry leaders to win in their markets. Often, the terms “effective,” “exemplary,” or “superior” are used instead of “best” to avoid this confusion.
The concept of “best practices” has been around since humans first walked on the planet and copied (or stole) a utensil used by another cave dweller. In today’s business environment, adopting and utilizing best practices can lead to a strategic advantage for the following reasons: - Cycle time in the development of refined methodologies is reduced.
- Analytical, research, and development costs are reduced because one is not “recreating the wheel.”
- The likelihood of success is increased because one is adopting a proven approach.
When coupled with other methodologies, the adoption of best practices can lead to distinct competitive or strategic advantage. At the micro or process level, best practices are applicable when used in conjunction with commonly used problem-solving or improvement methodologies such as PDSA, PDCA, DMAIC, QIC Story, or the Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving and Decision Model.
The above models promote the use of data to confirm the causes of a problem. This sets the stage for the selection of solutions based on a set of facts. Solutions can be created from scratch or adopted from another organization. Therefore, the most effective application for a best practice is in a situation when it can be proven to address a root cause confirmed with data. For example, if a child is not learning, it may be for one of many reasons. To select the best strategy, we must first understand why the student is not learning.
Best practices are also applicable at the macro level such as in the Baldrige, Deming, ISO, SACS, or Sterling organizational frameworks. Each model represents a rubric of 50-100 factors known to drive results in 6-10 major areas. Most organizations may excel in 10-20% of those factors; however, few excel in all. The basic premise behind all of these models is that to achieve and sustain excellence, then the more factors with excellent approaches in place is key. The adoption of best practices for these factors is one way to efficiently accelerate organizational improvement.
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What is meant by the term “best practice?"
Posted - 02/05/2010 : 16:59:30
