The Best Practice Problem
It’s an old problem, but many have been obsessed with capturing “best practice” and encouraging others to copy it. And many react against that obsession, pointing out that it prevents innovation. The idea that there is a best way, or best set of ways, to approach a problem limits your thinking, and prevents you from seeing other, possibly more fruitful solutions.
The reaction against best practices gains more weight the more complex the problem becomes, partly because the solution becomes more difficult to imagine. What’s the best way to solve a simultaneous equation? Easy. What’s the best way to run a country? Hmm. Much easier is to avoid worst practices - so runs the argument.
It’s one of those debates that runs across various domains. People react against “best practice, things are solvable, the world is orderly” approaches in broadly similar ways: Shirky et al react against the constraints of taxonomies and ontologies; postmodernists react against the supposed truths of science, the self-made react against MBAs, and so on.
Inuitively I agree with the doubters. My gut tells me that heuristics and experience, rather than rules are the way forward. But here’s my problem: aren’t statements such as “avoid best practices” examples of a best practice?
It’s probably just splitting hairs, but thinking about it tonight did highlight one thing that has been bugging me. Many of those against management by best practice, at some stage in their work, seem to become beholden to their approaches. They seem, and perhaps this is unfair, to slip from the laudable stance of doubting that things can’t be improved, or that things are “that simple”, to tubthumping (and often managing to hop deftly from tub to tub in the meantime). And as they do, I get the unshiftable feeling they’re essentially espousing their own best practices.
Keeping that middle line, between acting on what you believe to be right (or best practice) and continually questioning what you hold dearest is hard. I certainly don’t manage it nearly as well as I’d like, and sometimes feel as though I’m veering back and forth from wide-ranging doubt to dogmatic assertions at a rate of knots.
One thing I have found is that like attracts like. Dogma seems to attract dogma (or apathy), and questioning attracts questioning. And interestingly, agreement is much easier to get with some healthy questioning. The only real answer to “why don’t you understand me?”, I’ve found, is “because you don’t understand me“. And there’s a best practice in there somewhere.
Piers, thanks for opening this one up for us to have a look. It gives me the opportunity to stand behind you nodding vigorously and mouthing “what he said”.
It also lets me tell the story of why my blog and company are called Perfect Path. The path I’m alluding to (and I don’t know whether I’ve actually ever told anyone this before - which is typical) is the path between the stagnant pool of dogma and apathy and the crazy chaos of infinite questioning that never gets to an answer. Both of these states are extremely attractive* in my experience and, once in the spell of one or the other it’s quite a chore to pull oneself out, so the best way, the perfect path if you like, is the one that tiptoes in between, acknowledging both attractors, but always keeping from getting sucked in to either.
*attractive in the sense that they pull you towards them, not in the sense that they’d do well on Celebrity Love Island.
I knew I liked the name!
And I really think there’s something in the attractors you mention. Wonder what the role of enthusiasm is in all this? I read about successful entrepreneurs and they tend to:
- drive forward (dogmatically and enthusiastically)
- often work in pairs with what you might call an executive “Doubting Thomas”, and
- when they hit an obstacle, they go through a rapid “crazy chaos” time of questioning, rejig their dogma, and then drive forward again but with their enthusiasm maintained.
I think this is the other side of what I was talking about last year about fear and anxiety. The sort of person you describe has something in them that maintains their hope and belief in the future tempered with a sensible level of caution and that repeated pattern helps them to act accordingly.
I’m reminded of the werenotafraid.com stuff - it would be foolhardy to really not be afraid in circumstances where people among you are willing to blow themselves up on public transport - but that doesn’t mean we all stay at home under the stairs - we get on with life, but with an awareness that we need to be careful.
Interesting! I like the link to the We’re Not Afraid stuff - my first reaction to it was that it was great if a little gung ho. (Not afraid? Eh? Not afraid? How d’you manage that? etc)
One friend I know was stuck on the tube at King’s Cross and then directed by the police down towards Tavistock square, where she then saw the bus blow up. She’s still scared. Another is frantically having to rethink the reception to her August 6th wedding - she found out the day of her hen night that the venue (the HAC Club next to St Barts) is and will be being used as a morgue.
Both are getting on admirably with things, despite being fully “aware” of the dangers. And the response of both has been essentially that this was outside my control, and it could have been much, much worse. Mentally at any rate. I suspect they’re both upset/hurt/angry/scared in their different ways.
What I thought was interesting is the way that the closer people are to uncertainty then the less dogmatic they are. Probably an obvious point, but the Times did an interesting survey where Londoners were more against tough measures on suspected terrorists than any other area of the UK. The further people were away from the event, it seemed, the more dogmatic they became. I was kind if expecting the opposite.
Anyway, the latter friend does a famously funny rendition of “New York, New York” in a Spanish accent. And what better way of showing that it’s business as usual than singing “Nuevo Ee-Yorrk, Nuevo Ee-Yorrk…”? loudly in a pub that’s been hired last minute for your reception?
Piers, I like this post.
I’m also on the creative / non-conformist side of this debate, you’ll be surprided to hear
The paradox of “it’s good practice to avoid best practice” is very telling.
It’s about “levels”; meta-models rather than models. ie it’s better to understand where best practice “emerges” from on another level, than to mimic it on the same level.
Emergence and evolution are two strong threads of mine at the moment after reading Hofstadter’s “Godel, Escher, Bach”.