Forget Best Practice – Aim for Best Fit

Nothing is surer to get heads nodding in a meeting than suggesting that we should be out to achieve best practice.  Perhaps we’re even out to set best practice.  I’ve been guilty of it myself. 

But what actually does ‘best practice’ mean, and why am I against it?

According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, ‘best practice’ is “a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption”.

Optimal results for who?

No two people are the same.  No two organisations are the same.  This makes applying best practice across two people hard enough, let alone two or more teams, departments, or organisations.

It’s aspirational at best.  What is best practice for one organisation is not best practice for another.  All organisations have different organisational architecture, strategies, technology, premises, plant, equipment, technology, stakeholders, culture, personnel….

There is no cookie cutter approach to best practice.

Enter, “best fit’.

Best fit involves understanding an organisation’s context, including its external environment and internal organisation.  We must understand its purpose and objectives, its history, its cultural DNA.  We must be able to identify and detail its core competencies and unique value proposition.  We must also understand its risk appetite (positive & negative). 

Once we know all of this, we can then work on identifying and implementing a prioritised solution that is the ‘best fit’ for the particular organisation, team or individual, that will get them from where they are now to where they need to be.  For some it might be a very lean and agile solution, while for others it much be very rigid and structured.