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Do Best Practices Suck?

They're great says Ted Coine IF your practices are sub-par and IF you assume everybody else is standing still.

"Best practices are great and all – if your current practices are sub-par. After all, you have to start somewhere. But catching up with the Joneses is a fool’s errand. The best you can ever hope for is to catch up, but that would assume that the Joneses, and all your other neighbors, don’t improve. And I think we should all be quite comfortable by now with the notion that standing still is falling behind. After all, isn’t that what the firing squad asks prisoners to do? Stand still against that wall, so they can have a clear shot?"
And I love this recommendation, a little 'secret' to innovation:
"Hire people from outside the world of big business – teachers, actors, small business owners, bartenders, history majors just out of school – to work on your staff. Don’t just teach them how you do things. Much more importantly, ask them to tell you what their fresh eyes think of your systems. Every time they ask Why (as in “Why do we do it like this?”), give them a sign of your thanks – a crisp $100 bill, an afternoon off, a long lunch with you someplace special."
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