Oh boy, I’m sure my brothers and sisters who have studied so hard for their SPHRs and PHRs aren’t going to like this. Best Practices are hurting HR. I know, I hear you – but, Tim, you’re an idiot – if it wasn’t for HR Best Practices, I wouldn’t have discovered that tracking turnover was important! Really? Are you sure about that?
Give me a minute to explain – because I was once, just where you are today – believing Best Practices were the be all, end all of making HR better great.
Here’s the issue – Best Practices don’t make HR better, Best Practices make HR the same. Innovation, creativity and thought leadership make HR better. So, if all you’re doing is picking up HR Best Practices from your competition, from other industries, from your peers – you aren’t pushing HR forward, you’re actually just pushing HR to the middle.
Let me give you a personal example – I was once leading a HR Generalist function for a division of a large multi-national company. This company, for its time, was a leading HR shop – industry awards, great metrics, the whole nine yards. Each quarter they would have all the generalists come together to share “best practices” – with the thought that sharing best practices amongst the divisions will make us stronger as a whole. Sounds good so far, right? So, we all come in with our flashy PowerPoints and prepare to wow our peers with our best practices on everything from employee relations tracking tools to succession planning training modules for hiring managers – the majority of which were copied from our last organization that we were at, but with a cut and paste of our current company logo – and the new verbiage changing “employee” to “associate” because we’re now cool and hip and care about our “associates”.
Were these Best Practices? Yes. Were these making parts of the organization better? Yes. Were these going to lead our organization out of Average? Well, maybe slightly above average, but only for a short time, until our competition truly came up with something innovative, then we would be back to trying to get back to average.
The problem with instituting Best Practices is they don’t make you a “leading organization”, they make you a “following” organization. To lead means to innovate, and the only way you get to lead is to let those who work with you fail.
What? Fail! Yes, fail.
Best Practices don’t come through failure, they come through “good enough” or “better than we had before” – BUT true innovation, true industry leading ideas come through failure. Having something so broken, you start over and build something for your organization that gives you a competitive advantage – something that others will emulate and call “Best Practice”.
It’s okay. We all did it – we all went after the best practices – doesn’t make you bad, but it will make you average.
Tim, Great post. I find nothing wrong with sharing practices between HR professionals and have encouraged the practice because there is always room to improve what you are doing and chances are, someone else is doing things better than you in some areas. If you need improvement and can’t innovate, no sense of re-inventing the wheel.
I have not been a fan of the expression “best practices” and I agree that innovation is what needs to occur to be best, not what everyone else is doing.
I’m sure I got this from someone (I think it was @annbares) – there are no best practices but there are best principles. That makes a ton more sense.
Principles are things you use to start with – and then innovate, change, apply from there. Best practices are things you implement.
Big difference.
Totally agree – best practices = common.
Great post. The crux of this conversation lies in how we define innovation. For me innovation is found in both the creation of new and novel ideas and also the tweaking of old ideas (best practices). As a result, the “best practices” conversation can be a jumping off point for innovation. However, depending on the group’s desire and capacity for change, the “best practices” conversation can also be a crutch for average work and results. In order to effectively leverage these conversations you must have strong facilitation skills and a well founded understanding of your teams strengths and opportunities. When this foundation has been laid you are ready to fail…then succeed…then fail…then…
Your post makes me think that copying best practices with nothing more than a logo change really commoditizes HR. It brings us that much closer to clients buying off the shelf ready-made products that work (sort of), no matter the unique challenges a particular business faces.
Instead, I like your point about trying and failing. Try to take the best principles and then figure out how they impact the business you support…how can we create an awesome “whatever” that makes our business more competitive? The business will value that much more than a form redesign you stole from someone at SHRM.
I agree that “innovation, creativity and thought leadership make HR better.” Further, I believe service delivery makes HR outstanding.
You’re right, best practices have nothing to do with innovation and will not make you the best in your field.
On the other hand, it would be nice if everyone used these best practices as a set or rules or standards for whatever they do. Best practices are common sense, but unfortunately many people and companies lack common sense!
Tim,
Great message as HR needs to stop chasing so-called best practices. What you missed is that it all begins with the business strategy, not just trying to be different or innovative. An HR “best practice” at Google probably won’t work at General Motors and vice versa – they are in different industries, have different business strategies and require different organizational capabilities. The only real best practice is to understand the business and innovate from there.
Best practices are the false god of attempted excellence for the lazy and the mediocre.
The focus of my recruiting work and expertise is Lean, Six Sigma, Operational Excellence and the like – everything from Lean COOs to Lean & Green Operating VPs, Controllers, and even HR VPs and Directors. Among this crowd exists a profusion of blog dialog, discussion, and literature related to the concepts of best practices, benchmarking, metrics, etc.
Benchmarks, external metrics and best practices are about as meaningful in HR and business in general as “market comps” are in the real estate industry. Ever find a really good comp for your home?
After you document “best practices” and then adjust for the differences among each organization being benchmarked (size, market dynamics, geography, management talent, access to capital…and on and on), what you get is impossibly complex mumbo jumbo consultant-speak that only a statistical economist could ever begin to unravel. Perhaps a Realtor?
The only best practice is the one that you have individually discovered through your own experimentation. Yes, trial and error. Each time you try you learn, from successes and from failures. And these learnings begin to show you what works for you and for your organization. While some of the underlying concepts and principles may indeed appear similar to those in other organizations, only your own (owned?) best practices will ever lead you to excellence. What works for Tesco or WalMart won’t work for Target or Costco. So if you’re Kmart, sure, go see, go learn, and then come home and figure out what’s going to work for you. But don’t copy.
And that’s the way I see it. Adam Zak
PS – I created a proprietary methodology for conducting executive search. It’s called PDCAsearch(R), it’s based on the work of Deming (Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle) and it works for me, but won’t work for Gard, or Russ, or Spence, or even Lester and Dick…
Bless you, Tim. I just came from a Best Practices meeting for my company. I am beginning to believe that the best practice we have is committee meetings.
HR can do far better by being innovators and encouraging other areas of an organization to think critically and creatively without following the latest “new system.”