Why "Best Practices" Aren't (Or Aren't Always)
Pushing Back on Everybody's Favorite Innovation Stopper
Dear Reader,
As all of us are to some degree and in different ways, I’m an affirmation junkie. This is why this sweet postcard from my friend Ursula will be one I hang onto for years to come.
Ursula, whom I met in college at the University of Missouri-Columbia, graduated from Mizzou’s School of Journalism and became a professional reporter for a newspaper in Seattle, which makes this sentence and sentiment mean all the more to my wannabe journalist self:
“You challenge me to think into the issues, not just about the issues.”
I can die now. It doesn’t take much…but for most of us, it does take something. Thanks, Ursula.
To everyone else, as always, thanks for reading,
Craig
PS: As a reminder, you’re welcome and encouraged to email me directly with feedback, ideas, links, etc. at cmdunham [at] gmail [dot] com. Just know that, unless you specifically tell me not to, I may quote you here (though it will always be anonymously).
Hot Takes
Earlier this week, Gallup published the results of an ongoing political affiliation survey they’ve been running since 2004. The results are hardly surprising:
Lee Drutman, author of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America, tweeting about the poll on Monday, wrote,
“HALF of Americans now identify as Independents. This is a record-high in Gallup polling. And a huge jump since the election. This disaffiliation from the two major parties is very dangerous for democracy. It reveals deep, deep dissatisfaction.”
While I disagree with Drutman’s hypothesis that party disaffiliation is dangerous for democracy (truthfully, I’d like to see more of it), I do agree with his conclusion that we have an increasingly dissatisfied electorate across-the board that runs deep and begins long before any primary vote (think of both sets of clowns with which each party crowded the pre-primary debate stage 15 months ago). As Chris Stirewalt, Charlotte Lawson, and Sarah Isgur, report in The Dispatch’s The Sweep,
“Not surprisingly, Gallup also found another record breaker: 62 percent said the ‘parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.’ No, this doesn’t mean that the Bull Mooses are coming back, but it may mean that candidate recruitment will matter just that much more when partisan affiliation is no longer a voting shortcut for half the country.”
Lord, I hope so. For the record, I was registered as an Independent long before being registered as an Independent was 50% cool. My perspective is a mentality I hope others will adopt; namely, that if neither political party has any intention of putting forth a more decent candidate, perhaps enough of us will finally say, “enough,” and find ourselves a better one somewhere else. Which brings us to…
Over the weekend, Donald Trump made his first set of appearances (including a hideous and tacky gold-plated one) since leaving the White House at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), held in Orlando.
A statue of former U.S. President Donald Trump is pictured at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, U.S. February 26, 2021. REUTERS/Octavio Jones Columnist Damon Linker summed up the weekend on Monday:
“Trump owns the most passionate, committed faction of Republican voters, and that means he has the institutional party by the throat.
This doesn’t mean that Trump is certain to run for president again in 2024. In fact, at this point I suspect he won’t. But it does mean that he is going to dangle the possibility until the last moment, roughly three years from now, in order to keep the party and fundraising dollars planted firmly in his pocket. And this means, in turn, that his hold over the GOP between now and then is going to be close to absolute.
This first became clear on Sunday a couple of hours before Trump arrived to deliver his remarks at CPAC. That's when the results of the famed straw poll of attendees were announced: Sixty-three percent want Trump to run again in 2024, and if the primaries were held today, 55 percent would pick Trump as the nominee. That's in an imagined field of 21 candidates.
But the number that really stood out in the poll was this: a grand total of 95 percent of attendees want the party to continue Trump's policies. This astonishingly high number guarantees that, regardless of whether Trump himself actually runs — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis polled a very strong 43 percent when the former president was removed from the primary question, showing him to be a very early frontrunner for the nomination — Trumpism is going to be in the driver's seat.”
Just as the Democrats were split between Biden and Bernie and their respective establishment liberal and uber-progressive camps, the Republicans are facing their own pre-2024 split between Trump 2.0 and…? This is the question (and, I would argue, the problem) the Republicans are going to have to answer and figure out if they have any hope of contesting a (very) peaceful and planned transition of power from President Biden to Vice-President Kamala Harris.
Why “Best Practices” Aren’t (Or Aren’t Always)
Spend any time in just about any business, organization, school, or ministry, and you’re almost certain to hear two words that always set my teeth grinding:
Those words? “Best practices.” As in:
“We want to follow ‘best practices.’”
“What are ‘best practices’ in this situation?”
“‘Best practices’ call for…”
My initial response always tends to align with the five questions Jacque Vilet asks in her article, “The Myth of Best Practices: They Lead to Conformity, or Worse”:
Who decided the practice was best?
What basis was used to determine that the practice is best?
In what circumstances and under what conditions is the practice best?
Who is pushing the “best practice” and what are their motives and objectives?
What is the probability of success in implementing the “best practice,” given current resources and capabilities of your company?
I’m not trying to be unnecessarily contrary, but I am amazed at how little people think about this, particularly when facing the rhetoric firsthand. Nothing stops innovative thinking faster than “best practices” pressure, as the experience of a friend of mine in the tech world illustrates:
“In tech, that phrase is so over used it is now meaningless. It’s nothing more than a person or group’s attempt at bringing authority to their opinions…It is often used to shutdown dissent, so when you respond with questions, there are few good responses.”
Ultimately, the problem is not that there are perhaps indeed “best practices” of doing things; the problem is labeling them as such and expecting everyone to accept them accordingly (and sometimes unthinkingly) in the name and pursuit of progress.
That’s not really how progress works.
Not the Best Appeal to Authority
Back in the day when I was a headmaster, I would often see the “best practices” preoccupation creep onto our boards, usually because those coming on our boards were coming out of and from the business world. It was in these environments that I first heard the “best practices” phrase regularly invoked, typically as an appeal to authority, and almost always accompanied by the expectation that I investigate what other schools and headmasters were doing so as to make sure we were doing it as well.
The problem, of course, was that just as no two businesses are the same, no two schools or headmasters are, either; what works best for one (or even multiple ones) does not mean it will automatically work best (or even at all) for another. This was always tricky to try to explain, and would definitely be made more complicated when a board member suggested bringing in a consultant (whose perspective magically matched up with his opinion) to once and for all make the “best practice” point.
It’s one thing to go observe another school and bring back what could work at yours; it’s another to bring someone in from elsewhere to tell you what should work here.
Mike Myatt, writing in Forbes, says,
“The reality is best practices are nothing more than disparate groups of methodologies, processes, rules, concepts and theories that attained a level of success in certain areas, and because of those successes, have been deemed as universal truths able to be applied anywhere and everywhere.
Bottom line - just because a professor says it’s so, a consultant recommends it, a book has been written on it, or a product has been developed for it, doesn’t mean that whatever ‘it’ is constitutes the right option for you…There is always room for new thinking and innovation, or at least there should be.”
Something Better Than “Best Practices”
Maybe you’ve heard the story of the holiday meal preparation that involved the removal of the ends of a pot roast. Not understanding what seemed a “best practice” passed down from generation to generation, the great-granddaughter (who had already inquired of her mother and grandmother but received no answer beyond, “that’s just what we’ve always done”), asked her great-grandmother if and why she also cut off the pot roast ends before putting it in the pot? Her great-grandmother responded:
“Well, I never had a pot big enough, so I always just chopped off the ends and put the pot roast in. I’m not sure why your mother and grandmother do it.”
How much of what we do - in business, in organizations, in schools, in ministries - is what we do because that’s what we do? Do we know why? Has anyone ever asked?
Michael Quinn Patton, in his book, Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods: Integrating Theory & Method, writes,
“The allure and seduction of ‘best practice’ thinking poisons genuine dialogue about both what we know and the limitations of what we know…That modeling of and nurturing deliberative, inclusive, and, yes, humble dialogue may make a greater contribution to societal welfare than the search for generalizable, ‘best practice’ findings – conclusions that risk becoming the latest rigid orthodoxies even as they are becoming outdated anyway.”
One of my work colleagues was doing some research for a major website redesign project we are beginning. Last week, she sent me a message via Teams (in considering what she was researching, you’ll recognize that she is very thorough):
“In doing research on website footer elements, I noticed #9 in this article:
‘We love visitors from social networks. But we don’t love it when our visitors leave and go to Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. If they do…they ain’t coming back. That’s why our designers almost never put social media icons in website headers.’
Just one perspective, but something to keep in mind. How stringently do we want to try to follow web design best practices and recommendations (obviously there are many varied opinions on this available)?”
She was asking the right question. And, since we’re all of two months into working together, it seemed a good opportunity to go beyond just social media icons and their placement on a website and instead engage her question by sharing my own perspective on evaluating subjective matters like this. I wrote back:
“I tend to think of ‘best practices’ more along the lines of ‘next practices’; that is, I'm glad to know what other folks are doing and what may be working for them, but without some of our own trial and error, I never want to get so locked in that it's hard to get out of a prison of someone else’s making. I’m glad to have different perspectives to consider, but I want to hold them with an open hand along with our own discoveries and ideas for what's next.”
We haven’t decided anything yet on social media icons (or, frankly, much else in terms of website design), but our conversations are sure opening up because neither of us feels the need to have to convince the other of anything. We’ll do our due diligence, solicit outside feedback, and test and evaluate our eventual decisions, but we’ll determine what our “best practices” will be for now, without wasting energy questioning motives, pushing preferences, or claiming authority under their guise.
Craig’s Best Non-“Best Practices”
To be sure, there’s plenty of good that could be said about “best practices,” and as alluded in the title of the newsletter, not all “best practices” are always bad; indeed, there is a place for standards and processes, benchmarks and procedures - so long as they serve us in our context instead of us serving them because of someone else’s.
In many ways, when we’re talking about “best practices,” we’re really talking about wisdom. Here is what Lady Wisdom, personified in Proverbs 8:1-21 from Eugene Peterson’s Bible paraphrase, The Message (read the actual translated text in the ESV if you prefer), says about herself:
“I am Lady Wisdom, and I live next to Sanity;
Knowledge and Discretion live just down the street.
The Fear-of-God means hating Evil,
whose ways I hate with a passion—
pride and arrogance and crooked talk.
Good counsel and common sense are my characteristics;
I am both Insight and the Virtue to live it out.
With my help, leaders rule,
and lawmakers legislate fairly;
With my help, governors govern,
along with all in legitimate authority.
I love those who love me;
those who look for me find me.
Wealth and Glory accompany me—
also substantial Honor and a Good Name.
My benefits are worth more than a big salary, even a very big salary;
the returns on me exceed any imaginable bonus.
You can find me on Righteous Road—that’s where I walk—
at the intersection of Justice Avenue,
Handing out life to those who love me,
filling their arms with life—armloads of life!”
With these words in mind, here are four of my best non-“best practices” for your consideration. If they help, great; if not, may they be like water in the desert and you never think of them again.
Commit to yourself to never invoke a “best practices” argument out of an authoritarian manner or as justification for a position you happen to prefer. When you feel tempted to call on the “best practices” god because you don’t have any other ideas, it’s okay to say, “I don’t have any ideas,” and see what happens.
If you’re going to use the phrase, at least keep “best practices” plural, without capitals, and add the caveat “for now,” so as not to imprison the future. Beware of making standardization an idol that becomes more powerful over time.
Before you just accept or assume something as “best practice,” run it through the five questions included at the beginning of this article. Do you know who decided the practice was best, what basis was used to determine that the practice was best, and in what circumstances and under what conditions was the “best practice” was determined? Additionally, does anything need sniffed out as to possible motives by considering who is pushing the “best practice”? And have you asked yourself, what is the probability of success in implementing the “best practice,” given your current resources and capabilities?
Stay humble and learn; seek wisdom and grow; pursue good counsel and always use your common sense.
Post(erity): “Lessons from the Wilderness”
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something in each week’s newsletter (of course, you’re always welcome to search the archives yourself whenever you like).
Believe it or not, I wasn’t always as uncomfortable with “best practices” as I probably seem in this week’s feature article. To prove it, here’s a post titled, “Lessons from the Wilderness,” from October 23, 2011, in which I respond to a friend asking about “best practices” of how those who work at Christian camps and conferences can grow and nourish their own faith. Can you name the Christian pseudo-celebrity in the picture?
Peaches’ Picks
As you might notice from the green grass in the picture, this photo was taken in the summer…of 2019. That was when Peaches and I decided to (finally) take the plunge into all things Russian novels and read our first Dostoevsky. We thought we were so cool.
Unfortunately, after making it through the first third of the book, the multiple multi-named characters and uber-long chapters got the best of us and we gave up. And yet, despite our shame (we’re not ones who give up on books very often), we let the book sit on the dresser for these almost two years in hope of one day picking it back up again.
That day came this week - partially thanks to my high school senior’s effusive love of the book (she is reading it now at Petra Academy), as well as by way of help from a newsletter reader who gifted us some Audible credits. The verdict? So far, so good.
Fresh Linkage
“Bozeman Scientific Equipment Supplier Continues to Grow in Booming Industry” - For those interested, here's a write-up/video look into my working world at Montana Instruments. The reporter didn't quite get it right in terms of what we do (we don't make high-end computer systems; we're part of the industry supply chain that does), but that can be forgiven as cryogenics is complicated. Nice to get a little local attention that doesn't involve scandal.
“How Some People Can End Up Living at Airports for Months – Even Years – at a Time” - I have no desire to do it, but there have been times when it’s certainly felt like I have. (For an added Fresh Linkage bonus on the subject, watch this.)
“Letter to the Editor: Chronicle’s Police Reports Send the Wrong Message” - Some people have trouble finding things like our local Bozeman Police Reports funny, but I’m not one of them. (Note: be sure to visit the Facebook page as well.)
Let me know what you think of Second Drafts. Until next Friday.
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