Best practices: Enemies of Innovation

Okay everybody, we need to get something straight:  your organization will never achieve genuine innovation by focusing on best practices.  Yet leaders today just love best practices, probably because they seem easier, safer and less time consuming than original thinking.  In truth, however, best practices are nothing but fading copies of once great ideas, pale imitations of past originality.

My advice to you:  look around your organization and try to identify the so-called best practices in use.  Once you've done that, make every effort to erradicate those eroding approaches by developing new, creative solutions that seriously consider the changing, unmet or unseen needs of the customer.  The battle against best practices can be a wellspring of innovation if you're willing to fight it. 

Comments

[Ben Martin]

The more I think about this, the more I disagree with you, Jeff. Doesn't a mature knowledge-based worker apply best practices from other industries and other departments within their organization? The real danger is in adopting a best practice without adapting it to your own systems, processes, customers, etc. A truly innovative manager will both develop his/her own innovations AND recognize how a "best practice" can be applied to their own line of business.

[J]

I believe innovation and best practices can co-exist. There should however be a preamble to the BP documentation stating that it is a living document and the first best practice is to continue evolving and improving the BP.