I no longer think
different ways of working are inherently better or worse. I find the
most productive workers in any task group have found an optimal
process. Often that structure can be improved by adding processes
from outside the environment.
That’s harder
than it looks, as Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn’t
have to do it.
Yet, I have seen
several times when importing a little knowledge from another
discipline made for great gains.
My second tour
selling COBOL, we started changing our offer every six weeks,
borrowed from something I had read about cosmetics retailing.
Prospects were meeting with us just to be entertained, but as long as
we were there, would we take a look at...
Wasn’t too long
before senior management wanted to renegotiate commissions if it was
that easy...
Building a
cellphone empire, we had enough hard partiers that we used parts of
the 12 step approach to improve our global scalability. They
understood the need for weekly meetings, for having everyone define
their reality, for finding individual solutions. The level of
managerial opinion went way down, and we set industry records for
five years.
More frequently,
I’ve seen best practice candidates that appealed to someone’s ego
or how they THOUGHT the world should be. I wasted six weeks once
because my boss kinda read a book on an airplane and thought he had
found the silver bullet. My tribe thought I’d lost my mind.
Years later I
learned Best Practices Better Be Blatantly Obvious, Otherwise They
Are Not Best Practices. Wish I had figured that out.
Just when we’ve
optimized all we know, that’s when we get to participate in
disruptive
innovation, ready or not. Just when you perfect the carburetor,
you get fuel injection.
Stewart
Emery says there are two requirements for growth, an absolute
commitment to telling the truth about reality and surrounding
yourself with people who are committed to growth.
Isn’t that the
real secret of best practices?
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1 comment:
Dick:
Best practices for processes are about 80% universal and can apply to other tasks and industries - some as a direct application, some as a conceptual application.
If a carpenter's best practice is using ten-penny nails to secure critical stress points in a structure, can this concept be ported to a service organization? At the critical stress points of providing the service, would results be better with experienced or highly trained staff assigned to those roles? Like using a ten-penny nail instead of a common nail.
Never be too proud (or arrogant) to learn from what others have discovered and implemented.
Thanks for the post, Dick.
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