It is true that best practice is imitating what others are doing. By doing that, we are not going ahead than others, we are just following their back, we lack innovativeness and competitiveness an naturally we are losing.
The same idea with benchmarking. It is a stupid idea.

Great read and I think Damianus is on the right track.

Our team thinks one best practice, which has worked well for us, is to listen to your competition and customers to get insight into how you can solve the next issues they both face.

If you can do this you are way ahead of the game and will find the next “best” practice in the game you are playing today.

~Clint
@cazoomi

It is 100% benefit to setup the ‘best practice’ in an organization (especially the public one). By setting up the best practice, everyone knows what their roles and responsibilities are, how effective we are working, how to react when there defect or deficiencies are found, what’s the control point as well as the output, what the company’s aimed at,etc. I believe successful or not depends on our you setup your ‘best practice’.

Import of best practices are like the transplant of a healthier organ into the body with attendant immunological implications. Best practices should not be implemented for the sake of best practices. We must fine tune such best practices to fit into the organisation. Implementation of best practices also involve serious change management issues.
Regards
acharya

Best pactices are important for those already behind to easly catch up with the leading pack.However, for those already in the lead, it is a killer. It makes them lose their competitive advantage, stop innovartion and start moving at same pace with their competitors. The current position in the market matters, when you talk of best pactices and benck marking.

bulto

STRONGLY AGREE - indiscriminate Best Practice is Bad Practice.
ITIL philosophy makes sense: Study the total framework, apply what is relevant and achievable. Don’t attempt “Big Bang” all-at-once adoption.
Follow the slogan: “THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY!”
Isn’t “good practice” the new flavour that is preferred over “best practice”?

interesting

I like to read from time to time a piece I can not agree with, and this one I have to say is one of those I am happy to read and confirm there is more ignorance in the world, so I am not alone.
Best Practices do not limit innovation, they promote it, if there is a smart approach.
To begin, if every one would be at best practices, there would not be leaders and laggards, the fact is that both could be trace to its best practices: leaders excel, laggards lack of and may the last think they are truly innovative, truly different. Building on top of best practices to achive a better, faster, result is a lot smarter that building from the gound up, and yes complete new paradigm could be develop but how often and by how many genious? Should we invest on new practices for inventory control? For supply chain planning? Could we do better following the old practice and make it better for our needs?
Best Practices could led to a base reference but continuos improvements would make harder for laggards to approach leaders, off course the exception would be this one who develops a complete new concept and succeed with it.
Good luck!!

The concern is not that so called “best practices” are necessarily bad. Surely everyone can learn from what others have ironed out before. The danger lies in a mindless adoption of vanilla flavour practices, just because it is labelled “best” by someone else.

Well, imitating what others have done maybe a good practice for any business to follow but that is only if the business being imitated is successful and relates to the imitating business. If not then it will not work.

Ones must first fully understand the problem before trying to come up with a solution.

Would innovative help much if the thing ones try to innovating is neither the direct business of the company, nor would have any significant affect to the direct business of the company.