Best Practice and Best

It occurs to me that many people may be confusing best practice with best. I thought I might devote a few lines here to separating the two concepts in the hope that better (more productive) use of effort might result.



Best Practice is the survey of how others are doing whatever it is that we would like to do, picking out those that seem most successful, and documenting how they are doing it.



Best is an objective determination, based upon comparison, and using some standard of comparison, of several alternatives within a context.

Humans being what they are, we always have to carefully define the context we are working in. Humans being who they are, the definition is never quite good enough to resolve all doubts. I am cursed with the gift (cursed with a gift--who's with me?) of immediately seeing similarities and differences. Show me a rule and I'll find the exceptions. Show me several random situations and I'll show you the similarities. It's a gift in that I find it very useful--a curse in that it drives other people crazy.

I'll get right to the bottom line. A best practice effort is only going to produce results for you if your investigation examines contexts as well as process, tools, governance... To put it another way, do you have the same history, culture, experiences, skills and attitudes as the organization you're comparing yourself with? If not, that doesn't mean there's no value for you in their practice. It does mean that you're going to have to know more about them and about yourself before you can put your own version of that practice into effect.

As far as best goes, it's time that we gave up on the idea of supremacy. Best in a particular competition among equally matched competitors is still only good for the moment. That's why we have continuous improvement. It's why there are frequent surprises at playoff time.

The best you can find is still just the best that you can appreciate. When we know better, we'll do better.

Pragmatism and Sacred Cows

Something happened to me today that has happened before. I thought I had filed the barb off the hook and that I wouldn't be snagged by this any more, but I was wrong.

I made the statement that my work would be done when people no longer talked about data governance having realized that all varieties of governance are "governance." The response was to remark that statements like that are blue sky and that people will turn me off and look for someone more pragmatic.

Knowing, as I do, that the statement represents the ultimate in pragmatism--the application of what is known to make sense of what is unknown--I proceed (very quickly) through several emotions. I guess I have blunted the hook to the extent that I recognize the emotions as they appear--which is good. Where I wound up, after passing through the "I don't need this" phase, was appreciating Galileo, Darwin and Einstein.

I'm not comparing my contribution to theirs. I am comparing my emotions to what they almost certainly experienced as they struggled to break through the thickest of all possible walls--common knowledge.

Sometimes we have other names for common knowledge. We say "everyone knows that..." or "best practice states..." or any of a host of other codewords for what amounts to a sacred cow.

I have learned that the words "practical" or "pragmatic" or even "heresy" are silver bullets most often applied to protect the sacred cows from attacks by, well, me. I just want you to know that if you want practical solutions, you should get as far from best practice proponents as possible. You might even want to venture out to the boundaries of your organization to see what pragmatic really looks like.