Best practices. The activities and processes that correlate with success. You should want to migrate them throughout your organization to improve performance and accelerate change.
What do best practices look like? When it comes to organizational change, established best practices include: 1) communicate the “why” of change, not just the “what” and “how”, 2) identify and pursue “quick wins”, and 3) celebrate success. Those are just a few of the things you should do.
Yet best practices are only half the equation.
The other half of the equation is avoiding the activities and processes that correlate with failure. What I call “worst practices.”
And what do those look like? Again, considering organizational change, examples of worst practices include: 1) select a leader who has strong technical skills but poor people skills, 2) provide insufficient resources, and 3) tolerate behaviors that actively oppose the change.
Keep in mind that best practices aren’t simply the opposite of worst practices. While selecting the wrong leader might doom your change initiative to failure, selecting the right leader won’t guarantee success. You need to focus on both. The things you must do to succeed and the things you must not do to avoid failure. Best practices and worst practices.
Here’s a best practice for you: take 90 seconds right now and think about how you can apply this in your organization. Then record a first-step action item and calendar it for follow-up.
Make it happen.
Michael
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Why You Should Focus On Worst Practices As Well As Best Practices
