Best Practices... really?

Every walk in life undergoes developments, and man is usually inventive enough to optimise anything around him. This includes even every day's business processes. Recent attempts in the past few decades, have somehow systematically bundled improvement ideas into nowadays acknowledged philosophies. Labelled with BPIs, Best Practices or whether with more specific names like Six Sigma, even Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, A3, all are focused on eliminating a certain redundancy to increase measurable output - quality-wise, but equally quantity - while decreasing the costs.

The most important understanding is that it serves not so much the very own reputation, but should be beneficial to the customer. No matter, what so-called internal KPIs are being regarded as, the content of the customer is ultimately what matters. Poor quality, high price will make the customer to go to the competition, and you will be out of business. 

A big misunderstanding on this concept I once came across, when dealing with a partner, who approached me for a service. We agreed to a price and signed a contract, until.... the company stopped communicating. After attempted to address the issue, I received an e-mail, where I was bluntly told, that due to internal regulations for each external contract a tender is to be required. Assuming, that it was perhaps a misunderstanding, since the deal has been signed already, the response was the same: "Sorry, forget about the whole signed contract". Maybe a common practice in Slovakia, it is a behaviour, which to a westerner is a bit unusual. At least, from where I come from. Despite a few meetings, to come to an agreement, the opposite party was not willing to give in.

Deducing the whole development, it was quite apparent, that an over-eagerly Best Practices Manager of the said company, found some ways to figure out additional savings. Perhaps a job evaluation was pending, or whatever, but it seemed a fairly inexperienced attempt to squeeze out some lousy euros.

Best Practices, in my humble understanding, is a way to do the 'best'. But provoking breaches of contract to impress management seems far from a best practice. Ironically enough, it was one of my acquaintances, who conducted a best practices project with this company. Knowing him, I cannot imagine, that this was what he taught them.

New thoughts / business philosophies can easily be misused and thus becoming utterly counter-productive. The company in my view lost a considerable credibility and such tiny mishaps can result in creating a bad reputation to the outside world. News usually travels very fast, especially in our global virtual world. Such practice, and especially such incompetence to compensate for it, can be a huge business risk. New areas could perhaps be an interesting specialisation for young(er) generation managers. But never take this task too lightly. It takes more to manage portfolios than just superficial enthusiasm.