T5/05: The (impending) death of best practices (#5)

For me, #5 of the Top Five Issues of 2005 in the association community is the impending death of best practices.  If I sit in one more meeting and hear someone say, "Oh, and maybe people can share some 'best practices'," I think I am going to SCREAM!  Best practices are a concoction of some consultant, somewhere who wanted to try to sell some more consulting.  I suppose on that basis I should love them.  BUT I DON'T!  I do admit, however, that the "impending death of best practices" may be more wishful thinking on my part than anything else.  Still, let me start making my case and give others the chance to join the chorus or excoriate me for being wrong!  ;>)

In my view, best practices are ruining all organizations, including associations, because we use them as substitutes for genuine critical thinking about important ideas.  Also, most best practices are shared and considered without any (much less a full) appreciation of the context in which they were originally developed.  I understand that people like to talk about things that "worked," but we simply have to allow more space in our conversations for the underlying ideas that drive successful work.  I mean, if you don't fully understand the idea, how can you do anything other than run the best practice playbook in your organization and hope things work out for the best?

More than anything else, however, I'm concerned that association managers may well prefer to run their organizations using an amalgam of best practices drawn from other associations and possibly from organizations in other sectors.  While I suppose this approach is intuitively simple and practical for time-starved, information-overloaded staff and volunteer leaders, I think it creates difficult strategic and capacity-building challenges for our organizations.  While many people in our community disagree with me, I believe the time has come in the historical trajectory of associations when we must stop tinkering at the margins, move beyond playing politics and tap our unseen and unused resources to make deep-seated change possible.  To me, the focus on so-called "best practices" is antithetical to that notion.

Okay, let the fun begin!   

Comments

[Jeff De Cagna]

Thanks Sue and Wayne for your postings. Sue, I love your comparison with doctors and I think we would find that most professionals who go beyond the suggested and recommended approaches end up serving their members, customers and clients.

One of the big shortcomings of "best practices" is that they don't often take pure luck into account. When things work because the stars aligned that does tell us anything about the appropriateness of the practice except that in worked under those very limited cirumstances. When we can get beyond the so-called best practice to appreciate the approach from a broader point of view, we're more likely to be able to adapt it to our unique contexts.

Wayne, I like the term "effective practices" better. To me, it somehow conveys the idea that this practice can work for you without guaranteeing success in the way that "best" does.

[Wayne Amundson]

We avoid the use of the term "best practices" for the reasons that Jeff describes. A few years ago I started referring to "better practices" as a way to identify those ideas that are worth looking at.

[Sue Pelletier]

This discussion reminds me of an article I read recently in the New Yorker by surgeon Atul Gawande, called "The Bell Curve." Like associations, doctors are urged to adhere to best practices as determined by evidence-based medicine and research. But those who do aren't necessarily the ones whose patients do best. The top end of the bell curve are docs who look beyond the recommendations and guidelines to the patients themselves--and come up with what they really need, based on their individual strengths and quirks. (The article is well worth a read. Available online at http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?041206fa_fact)

I'd argue that associations need to do the same thing: Really look at their constituencies, at what they use and don't use, what they need/want, and why. Otherwise, they could be applying "best practices" beautifully, but still falling by the wayside as their competitors run up to the top end of the bell curve. Such a simple idea. So hard to accomplish, for some reason.