I’m not trying to engage in the “nuance,” but rather engage in a conversation with you about what you wrote in this specific post. If that requires me to understand the context of six years’ worth of previous posts, comments, and references, I can’t really say it’s worth it for me…especially for something that you describe as “half-baked” “raw materials” written mainly for your own benefit.

Consider me retired from commenting. The entrance fee is too steep.

I’m a big fan of checklists and performance support tools. We used them in the hospital where I worked and I helped develop them for helicopter aircrew. Checklists are good for ERP (easily repeatable processes) especially when time is critical. However, more of our work is doing BRP (barely repeatable processes).

Best practices for simple environments (there are simple aspects of medicine, like following a safety checklist)

Good practices for complicated environments (rules of thumb, guidelines)

Emergent Practices for complex environments (constantly evolving through use)

Novel Practices for chaotic environments (trying something new or from a different field)

My main concern is that too often we look at successful organizations and just try to copy what they are doing. This is not dogmatic, it’s based on my observations of many organizations over a few decades.

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* No blog post or article is going to address every angle or every consideration of a complex issue. This blog is mostly for me. These are my half-baked thoughts which I make public in order to share and to learn. This post will probably be edited several times and may become part of a longer article or white paper. What you see here is the raw material. Much of the nuance is in the flow of the conversations here for the past six years. Most posts are within the context of previous posts, their comments and the references.

There are times when it makes sense to re-contextualize, and there are times when it makes more sense to simply adopt someone else’s best practice.

Pronouncements like “there are no easy answers” and “imitating what others do is not the way to make progress” are dogmatic.

Sometimes there is an easy answer–like using a checklist that reinforces practices that you probably thought you were doing all along. Sometimes imitating others does help an individual make progress–like when a poor performer slavishly mirros the behaviors of his successful co-worker.

Admitting this won’t get you an article in Fast Company, and it probably won’t make a great blog entry…but there it is.

A fundamental and core assumption underneath the theory that has spawned competency models.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/41/sternin.html

The point of the New Yorker article, I believe, is that one cannot only look at what others are doing but must push at the envelope of knowledge & practice. I like this definition by David Shaffer; “A professional is anyone who does work that cannot be standardized easily and who continuously welcomes challenges at the cutting edge of his or her expertise.” The same goes for professional organizations, in my opinion. Non-standardized work doesn’t tend to best practices, but there is still a need for high expectations of the results of the work.

The radical concept is that Best Practices just don’t cut it because they cannot be copied but must be understood and then adapted, if possible, for a different context. Best Practices only translate directly for simple tasks: http://www.jarche.com/2010/07/managing-in-complexity/

This kind of transparency and comparison is not really at odds with “best practices,” however. If Hospital A compares itself to Hospital B and discovers that Hospital B is getting better outcomes by doing XYZ process, why in the world WOULDN’T they adopt XYZ process, too?

Not sure why articles on training blogs always seem so either/or, radical, or dogmatic.