Worlds Worst Practice

Surely at this moment, somebody, somewhere, is the best at something in the world. The fastest runner or swimmer, the best at mathematics, the best tennis or golf player, the best CEO, the best designer of environmentally sustainable buildings, the best software security expert.

Even through plain old statistical variability, somebody must be on the far right of the normal distribution of capability in a selected field and, conversely, somebody must be on the far left. The best and the worst.

Most of us, on average, are around the middle of this normal distribution where the mean, the median and the mode are all coincident. Its not so bad to be average. You are in good company!

If we all strive for improvement, as is human nature, be it either personal or organisational, we try to push all three values of mode, mean and median and in fact the whole Gaussian curve, to the right. We try to shorten the distance between us and the best performer. As a consequence there is less variability in the entire statistical population and we all compress along the x-axis of the normal distribution. But the distribution does remain normalised. Perhaps we lose resolution on the graph, so we could zoom in a bit. Afterwards, except for the greater spacing of the tick marks on the x-axis, the distribution looks identical to before we all improved at all!

If we were talking about a distribution of supplier capability and performance (assuming a large enough population), and it was a customer plotting the data, trying to make a choice as to which supplier to award a contract to, then after the improvement of the entire population the client is in exactly the same situation as before. It is no easier nor no clearer as to which supplier to choose. It is impossible for customers to measure expertise, professionalism and reliability. They usually have no choice but to choose based on price.

But we all must improve and strive to be the best for fear of being left behind by our competitors. If we slip further and further to the left of the normal distribution then we are getting further and further away from World's Best Practice and presumably closer and closer to World's Worst Practice!

World's Best Practice

World's Best Practice is a suitably annoying term that it would be best never to use it. It is based on the presumption that you are the most right hand member of the statistical population and nobody is better. It infers the ultimate knowledge. It signifies that, even though improvements may become available at some point in time in the future, currently improvement is simply not possible.

If we look at a system, any system such as a machine, a computer, a business or even a person, we could represent it as receiving one or more inputs, processing them and subsequently producing one or more outputs.

Maybe you are the system and this is a representation of your intellectual or emotional response to a given situation.

The most controllable systems have some kind of feedback mechanism to assess the suitability of the outputs and compensate for when they do not have the desired effect.

When we talk about World's Best Practice, we are actually talking about some level of performance we can witness and usually measure. The golf swing with the greatest distance. The most secure computer network design. The most reliable project management methodology. But aren't these system outputs, not inputs?

Is it World's Best Practice to:

• Hit the ball like Tiger Woods or practice golf for a lifetime like Tiger Woods?
• Design the most secure network design or study and consider all aspects of electronic security, network design topologies and threat countermeasures?
• Manage projects according to a fixed methodology or address all sources of statistical uncertainty and variability and identify and mitigate all risks?

What is commonly referred to as World's Best Practice is in fact a description of the outstanding outputs or performance achieved by outstanding people. And the thing that made them outstanding, beyond their intellect, talent and dedication, was their behaviour. Their inputs. Their commitment to a lifetime of acquiring and sharing knowledge in their respective fields, trying new things and not being afraid to express new and sometimes controversial or even radical ideas, being a leading communicator in their field, keeping an open mind, evaluating their performance realistically and without self-delusion, and, as a result of all of that, adjusting their behaviour accordingly.

To us, World's Best Practice is not a description of system outputs in and of themselves. It is a description of the system inputs you need to achieve outstanding performance. It is a description of behaviour. Therefore it is impossible to deliver "World's Best Practice solutions" to customers. All you can do is try to emulate the behaviour of people who are the best in their field. That can only mean dedication, hard work, persistence, learning, striving, improving, adapting, sharing, teaching, studying, reading, evaluating, adjusting, and so on and so forth. The list goes on. These are the things which are representative of World's Best Practice.