Implementing Best Practices

About the Program

Category: County Administration and Management (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

It is not unusual for an organization in search of best practices to implement new ideas. And in many cases, they are successful, at least to some degree. But a large portion of these new ideas start with all the best intentions, then tail off over time as the original methods settle back into place. The term, flavor of the day, is often used to describe these ideas that seem to hit the table once a top executive returns from a conference or reads the latest book. The idea is given top priority and is hastily pushed down into the organization with the executive stamp of approval. And it works every time. That is, if the idea is the right one to address the problem or challenge the organization is facing, it is a good fit for the organization’s culture, those implementing the idea have complete buy-in and support, everyone involved knows what to do and how to do it, the expected outcomes and accountability are clear and are being measured, and implementing the new idea doesn’t leave a damage path. Even the very best ideas can fall victim to poor planning or poor execution. And unfortunately, once an idea dies it has very little chance of being revived or getting past the, “We tried that before and it didn’t work”, paradigm. Implementing a new idea often takes time and resources, additional time and resources which as a new priority, puts other actions and activities on hold or worse, increases work load beyond reasonable capacity. It doesn’t take too many failed attempts for those doing the work to disengage from any and all new initiatives. An organization can avoid much of the risk and downside of implementing new ideas and applicable best practices by deploying a consistent methodology for locating and identifying them, and thoroughly vetting them before committing to their adoption. In 2015, as our own organization began to emerge from thirty years of little or no progress, our own Dark Age if you will, we consumed new ideas as a starving man who had just been allowed to eat. It quickly became apparent that we had to have a systematic approach to control the quantity and quality of ideas making it to the implementation stage. This approach had to manage risk while increasing the likelihood of success.