Best Practices for Best Practices

Best practices are guidelines for action that reflect an organization’s best solution to a task in a given circumstance. Effective best practice implementations understand that practices change and evolve with the market and shifts in business objectives. Best practices needs to be viewed as a systematic process. The process must incorporate the knowledge cycle, which consists of authoring and publishing, discovering, learning and improving - and it must be informed about the corporate strategy so it can focus on the most strategic areas that support business objectives.

Read this Planning Assumption to learn the specifics about the knowledge cycle for best practices:Strategy - Incorporate best practices into the corporate strategic planning so knowledge components are identified that reflect organizational goalsAuthoring and Publishing - Create expertise or competency systems that allow people to find the sources of knowledgeDiscovering - Develop a knowledge exchanges where people can post ideas that others might be interested in - and if an idea pays off, offer a rewardLearning - Foster site visits, tours and internal conferences that not only bring best practices to light, but also connect people who may want to apply themImproving - Incorporate best practices into the business, embedded into products or processes so they are not extra steps, but the way in which work is accomplishedSustaining - Reward top-performers and encourage them, through incentives, to share their practices - but avoid rewarding individuals in favor or teams.