For more than the past decade, businesses across the country and around the world have been developing, identifying, implementing, and adapting best practices as one means of achieving the excellence of efficiency and superior customer service that would set them apart from their competitors. No doubt your company is engaged in the same quest.

Process of best practices transfer

A rec

News of the invention of the wheel must have traveled in every direction as quickly as horse or camel could run. Those who learned of its advantages over the litter and the sledge adopted it right away. And no sooner was it adopted than it began to be adapted: made lighter, stronger, faster. Wheels were soon attached to axles, then to axles with pivots.

The idea catches on

Then transportation lost its monopoly on the new technology, and wheels helped to make pottery, lift buckets out of wells, steer ships, grind grain, keep time. Even now, the process of adopting and adapting the wheel continues as new uses are modified, improved, and applied in ingenious ways. The observation is certainly true: “Without the wheel, today’s civilization would be impossible.” [1]

No wheel, little progress

Meanwhile for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, in islands of the South Pacific, the Americas, and other isolated places, cultures existed without any knowledge of the wheel. Their technology lagged behind because they still faced that first, high hurdle. Human beings have always been better modifiers than inventors. Why reinvent the wheel when someone has already done the hard work?

Best practices needed

Like civilization, your company is on a journey; yours is one of continuous quality improvement. It is “a journey with a definite a beginning but no end, and every one of your employees is a co-traveler. The extent of your progress depends on how well you live your core values values: like company family, commitment to quality, customer focus, embracing technology, integrity and respect, and teamwork. These values overlap, merge, and blend into one another when it comes to the sharing, evaluating, and implementing of best practices.

Definition is important

What are best practices? Unless we have a clear idea of what they look like, we won’t recognize them when we see them. According to the American Productivity and Quality Centre, best practices are “those practices that have been shown to produce superior results; selected by a systematic process; and judged as exemplary, good, or successfully demonstrated.” [2]

Of course, this definition still leaves quite a bit of room for differences of opinion about what is “best” and what is not. According to C. Ashton in Managing Best Practices, “best” is always contextual, or situation-specific.” [3] A more sophisticated, multilevel approach to defining best practices comes from Chevron: [4]

• Good idea – unproven but makes sense intuitively; could have a positive impact on business performance; worth investigating further.
  
  
• Good practice – technique, methodology, procedure, or process already implemented that has improved business results for an organization in a measurable way.
  
  
• “Proven” best practice – a good practice determined to be the best approach, based on analysis of process performance data.

For more than the past decade, businesses across the country and around the world have been developing, identifying, implementing, and adapting best practices as one means of achieving the excellence of efficiency and superior customer service that would set them apart from their competitors. No doubt your company is engaged in the same quest.

Process of best practices transfer

A rec

No wheel, little progress

Meanwhile for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, in islands of the South Pacific, the Americas, and other isolated places, cultures existed without any knowledge of the wheel. Their technology lagged behind because they still faced that first, high hurdle. Human beings have always been better modifiers than inventors. Why reinvent the wheel when someone has already done the hard work?

Best practices needed

Like civilization, your company is on a journey; yours is one of continuous quality improvement. It is “a journey with a definite a beginning but no end, and every one of your employees is a co-traveler. The extent of your progress depends on how well you live your core values values: like company family, commitment to quality, customer focus, embracing technology, integrity and respect, and teamwork. These values overlap, merge, and blend into one another when it comes to the sharing, evaluating, and implementing of best practices.

Definition is important

What are best practices? Unless we have a clear idea of what they look like, we won’t recognize them when we see them. According to the American Productivity and Quality Centre, best practices are “those practices that have been shown to produce superior results; selected by a systematic process; and judged as exemplary, good, or successfully demonstrated.” [2]

Of course, this definition still leaves quite a bit of room for differences of opinion about what is “best” and what is not. According to C. Ashton in Managing Best Practices, “best” is always contextual, or situation-specific.” [3] A more sophisticated, multilevel approach to defining best practices comes from Chevron: [4]

• Good idea – unproven but makes sense intuitively; could have a positive impact on business performance; worth investigating further.
  
  
• Good practice – technique, methodology, procedure, or process already implemented that has improved business results for an organization in a measurable way.
  
  
• “Proven” best practice – a good practice determined to be the best approach, based on analysis of process performance data.

For more than the past decade, businesses across the country and around the world have been developing, identifying, implementing, and adapting best practices as one means of achieving the excellence of efficiency and superior customer service that would set them apart from their competitors. No doubt your company is engaged in the same quest.

Process of best practices transfer

A rec

Definition is important

What are best practices? Unless we have a clear idea of what they look like, we won’t recognize them when we see them. According to the American Productivity and Quality Centre, best practices are “those practices that have been shown to produce superior results; selected by a systematic process; and judged as exemplary, good, or successfully demonstrated.” [2]

Of course, this definition still leaves quite a bit of room for differences of opinion about what is “best” and what is not. According to C. Ashton in Managing Best Practices, “best” is always contextual, or situation-specific.” [3] A more sophisticated, multilevel approach to defining best practices comes from Chevron: [4]

• Good idea – unproven but makes sense intuitively; could have a positive impact on business performance; worth investigating further.
  
  
• Good practice – technique, methodology, procedure, or process already implemented that has improved business results for an organization in a measurable way.
  
  
• “Proven” best practice – a good practice determined to be the best approach, based on analysis of process performance data.

For more than the past decade, businesses across the country and around the world have been developing, identifying, implementing, and adapting best practices as one means of achieving the excellence of efficiency and superior customer service that would set them apart from their competitors. No doubt your company is engaged in the same quest.

Process of best practices transfer

A rec

Of course, this definition still leaves quite a bit of room for differences of opinion about what is “best” and what is not. According to C. Ashton in Managing Best Practices, “best” is always contextual, or situation-specific.” [3] A more sophisticated, multilevel approach to defining best practices comes from Chevron: [4]

• Good idea – unproven but makes sense intuitively; could have a positive impact on business performance; worth investigating further.
  
  
• Good practice – technique, methodology, procedure, or process already implemented that has improved business results for an organization in a measurable way.
  
  
• “Proven” best practice – a good practice determined to be the best approach, based on analysis of process performance data.

For more than the past decade, businesses across the country and around the world have been developing, identifying, implementing, and adapting best practices as one means of achieving the excellence of efficiency and superior customer service that would set them apart from their competitors. No doubt your company is engaged in the same quest.

Process of best practices transfer

A rec

For more than the past decade, businesses across the country and around the world have been developing, identifying, implementing, and adapting best practices as one means of achieving the excellence of efficiency and superior customer service that would set them apart from their competitors. No doubt your company is engaged in the same quest.

Process of best practices transfer

A recent study identified six steps involved in the transfer of best practices:” [5]

1. Searching

   This step involves finding best-in-class solutions from a variety of sources, both internal and external to your company. Your company's SOPs constitute a tremendous resource (hopefully available on your intranet) available to and from employees in all of your sites and regions. Success stories contained in newsletters and award presentations are another internal source. Good sources for external searches can involve newsletters and journals, business contacts, trade shows and workshops, new hires, “boomerang” employees.” [6] and outsourcing contacts.” [7] If you start looking for best practices, your search will certainly pay off.” [8]
   
   

2. Evaluating

   This is a critical but essential step, though it is heavily dependent on the specific situation and people involved. On the one hand is the tendency to assume “the way we’ve always done it is the best.” On the other hand is the equally questionable assumption, “it must be better because it’s new.” [9]
   
   

3. Validating

   Measurements help to eliminate this kind of subjectivity. Does the department already engaged in the practice have higher productivity, less downtime, more rapid customer response, or fewer reworks than the same department at another site that has not adopted it? The evidence should be compelling that the payback of the change will be much greater than its costs. And once a practice is validated as “best” it needs to be publicized. This will encourage others not only to adopt it, but to come forward with best practices of their own.
   
   

4. Implementing

   The practice has to be documented (usually in an SOP), and usually someone already engaged in the practice should be involved in training others. During the implementation step, team members should be looking to adapt the practice to local needs and varying circumstances, as well as analyzing opportunities for improvements.

   A note of caution: Although “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” copying someone else’s success does not always work. As David Bracken, director of Mercer Delta Consulting, put it, “I have always been skeptical about taking tools designed in one setting and using them in another organization ... more often than not attempts at ‘copying’ are doomed to failure.” [10]

   Not only might the copied practice suffer from “copy-of-a-copy” degradation, but the people on whom the practice is imposed might very well lack the motivation of the group that developed and implemented the practice in the first place.
   
   

5. Reviewin