Learning from Worst Practice

by Kerry Larkan on June 16, 2009

One of the things I noticed, while writing ‘THE TALENT WAR’ and WINNING THE TALENT WAR, is that many of the good leaders I’ve met and interviewed don’t rush to copy the best business practices without considering the impact to their business.

I’ll leave the final word to Sidney Winter and Gabriel Szulanski in a piece they wrote for the Harvard Business Review:

“Businesses often fail when they try to reproduce a best practice. One reason: in-house “experts” don’t truly know why it worked in the first place.”

In his book, ‘Corporate DNA’, Arnold Kransdorff states:

“In reality, copying others ignores the context of both place and time and disregards the dynamic of ones own organization-specific circumstances. It kills innovation and learning opportunities. Most businesses only learn from worst practice.”

There is now empirical evidence that creating a workforce that is committed and engaged will produce greater productivity, higher job satisfaction for employees and better total return for shareholders.