On Best Practices

From Organic KM (a blog I only recently discovered – thanks Jack) are some interesting thoughts on the nature of best practices:

Organic KM: Best Practices & Conventional Wisdom: “The key challenge with Best Practices is that blind adherance to known and hopefully the most effective way of solving problems does not always yield expected results. A mismanaged Best Practices initiative might stifle the need to question conventional wisdom. “

Another post discussing “dynamic” best practices in the form of lessons learned comes from Patti at Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness:

The core of the [AAR (After Action Review) process as it is practiced by the US Army’s National Training Center] is to elicit learnings from an experience that can be immediately applied in the next round of activities.

As a former Army officer, I can attest to the value of a well conducted AAR, especially in building the effectiveness of a team. The AAR, more than anything, is probably responsible for shaping my lack of faith in “Best Practices” as a static repository of the way things are done (except, of course, for those things that don’t change much over time).