Best Practices, Benchmarks, & Lessons Learned

If you want to destroy your company follow Best Practices...

Actually destroy might be a “tad” too harsh but it will certainly keep your company from being all that it can be.

A best practice is a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark.

In addition, a "best" practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered. Best practice is considered by some as a business buzzword, used to describe the process of developing and following a standard way of doing things that multiple organizations can use.

Best practices are used to maintain quality as an alternative to mandatory legislated standards and can be based on self-assessment or benchmarking. Best practice is a feature of accredited management standards such as ISO 9000 and ISO 14001.

Some consulting firms specialize in the area of best practice and offer pre-made 'templates' to standardize business process documentation. Sometimes a "best practice" is not applicable or is inappropriate for a particular organization's needs.

A key strategic talent required when applying best practice to organizations is the ability to balance the unique qualities of an organization with the practices that it has in common with others.

Good operating practice is a strategic management term. More specific uses of the term include good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practice, good laboratory practice, good clinical practice and good distribution practice.

And, it really sounds like it is the right thing to do.

Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance metrics to industry bests or best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. In the process of best practice benchmarking, management identifies the best firms in their industry, or in another industry where similar processes exist, and compares the results and processes of those studied (the "targets") to one's own results and processes. In this way, they learn how well the targets perform and, more importantly, the business processes that explain why these firms are successful.

Benchmarking is used to measure performance using a specific indicator (cost per unit of measure, productivity per unit of measure, cycle time of x per unit of measure or defects per unit of measure) resulting in a metric of performance that is then compared to others.

Also referred to as "best practice benchmarking" or "process benchmarking", this process is used in management and particularly strategic management, in which organizations evaluate various aspects of their processes in relation to best practice companies' processes, usually within a peer group defined for the purposes of comparison.

This then allows organizations to develop plans on how to make improvements or adapt specific best practices, usually with the aim of increasing some aspect of performance. Benchmarking may be a one-off event, but is often treated as a continuous process in which organizations continually seek to improve their practices.

Benchmarking and Best Practices seem to have a tendency to overlap themselves with each other.

So, let's take a closer look at both of these, shall we?

Benchmarking and Best Practices both rely on tips and techniques that have proven over time to be quite successful that that particular company. And, the key word here is over time. So, how much time has passed actually? Is is 3 years or 5 years or 10 years?

And, how do we heard about Benchmarking and Best Practices? Is there an annual convention in which all the various ideas are submitted to a panel of one's peers and it is the responsibility of that panel then to vote and select which one of those practices is the BEST?

When Tom Peters was traveling around the country collecting data for his books on EXCELLENCE and his subsequent PBS shows, he would report on companies and how they were doing things and how in the act of doing those things, they became successful.

His Works:

• 1982 – In Search of Excellence (co-written with Robert H. Waterman, Jr.)
• 1985 – A Passion for Excellence (co-written with Nancy Austin)
• 1987 – Thriving on Chaos
• 1992 – Liberation Management
• 1994 – The Tom Peters Seminar: Crazy Times Call for Crazy Organizations
• 1994 – The Pursuit of WOW!
• 1997 – The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to Greatness
• 1999 – The Brand You 50: Or: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an "Employee" into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! (Reinventing Work Series) ISBN 978-0375407727
• 2003 – Re-imagine! Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age
• 2005 – Talent
• 2005 – Leadership
• 2005 – Design
• 2005 – Trends (co-written with Martha Barletta)
• 2010 – The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence

We all assumed that what they were doing then had to be the best way of doing something; but, I have a little question here... who did they get this idea from?

Now, this is the really funny part... they did not get this idea from anybody, they just dreamed it up themselves and it seemed to have worked for them.

So, thanks to Tom Peters, we know have Benchmarking and Best Practices as THE WAY to get things done in the business world.

But again, I have a little question... why?

While you are thinking about that, let me share this Benchmarking/Best Practice with you. In 2008, it was discovered that I had suffered a massive heart attack (that I never felt) that would have killed me had I not been extremely healthy. 

After the surgeons at a University Hospital explored my heart, they discovered that I had 3 major blocked arteries on the left side. The LAD (called the widow maker) was 100% blocked and the other 2 were 90% blocked. The surgeons came into my recovery room a short while after the surgery and recommended that I have triple bypass surgery...

Why I asked?

Because it was the Best Practice right now and I was also informed that the surgeons would be following the Benchmark in how that surgery be performed.

I felt like I was in good hands and agreed to the surgery.

Within the next day or two I informed members of my family that I was going to be having triple by-pass surgery. A day or two after that, my brother called me as I was driving home from work and told me that a Doctor Moses was going to call me shortly.

Within a few minutes, my cell phone rang again and it was Dr. Moses on the line. Dr. Moses informed me that he had invented and perfected a procedure where he could vacuum out my arteries and insert stints (if need be) without cracking open my chest and performing evasive surgery with a triple bypass.

I was utterly amazed to say the least and asked him for a day to think it over to which he responded that he thought I was stupid but that he would give me a day and for me to call his nurse tomorrow.

I called the University Hospital and eventually was able to speak to my Cardiologist who informed me that he nor his colleagues had the skills, the ability, the technology, or the equipment to do what Dr. Moses was going to do... so, I canceled my bypass surgery.

Best Practices and Benchmarking did not mean squat to Dr. Moses... and, I am glad he decided not to follow them because otherwise I would be supporting a ZIPPER on my chest.

So, if you have the need and desire to follow something or someone, then follow yourself with LESSONS LEARNED, and each year seek out ways to make continuous improvements so that you can develop a new set of Lessons Learned. And, maybe in so doing, you will develop an idea that others may want to use as a Benchmark or as a Best Practice.

Why follow someone when you can LEAD?