Are There Best Practices for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption?

I recently read a post, Why Best Practices Don’t Work for Knowledge Work, by my friend, Luis Suarez. It nicely articulated some ideas I have been thinking about for some time.  Luis was, in turn, inspired by a post from Oscar Berg, Forget about copying best practices. Luis noted that he has been blogging about knowledge management for seven years and has yet to write a post on KM best practices.  He writes, “"Best Practices" are the worst thing you can apply to any kind of knowledge work. Any kind. Social Computing is no different.”

Luis claries that he is objecting to the word “best” and that good practices are certainly possible. He finds best practices associated with the terms: static, fixed, inalterable, unmodified, unbeatable, perfect. In contrast, he finds knowledge work, and enterprise 2.0 certainly falls into this bucket, is: dynamic, flexible, malleable, modifiable, flowing, a continuous learning experience, imperfect.  Luis goes on to say that practices that are successful in knowledge work are very context dependent and this is why there cannot be a standard set of best practices. I could not agree more.

In the early nineties I was involved with a number of colleagues at a small consulting firm helping a large property casualty insurance developing a process approach to knowledge work and the technology to deliver it to their knowledge workers. We eventually learned of the term “knowledge management” and applied that to what we were doing but it was really more like a primitive version of enterprise 2.0.  Although the firm was small a number of the senior execs at the firm were from big consulting. They wanted to package what we did and sell it to others as a repeatable offering.

It never worked quite like that because what we had done was very context dependent. I raised these objections internally but this was seen as counter to effective sales.  No one wanted to hear the phrase “it depends” when asked about best practices. Sure we followed some common process steps in developing a strategy and an implementation plan during the creation of further projects.

However, the people on the ground who had done a prior project knew to not try to simply offer what was done before. They understood the concept of context and knew that the substance of the new work needed to reflect the needs of the current situation rather than universal best practices. The senior people trying to sell the work did not want to hear this.  After all, if we did not offer best practices how could we justify the high fees we were charging. Unfortunately, the senor people buying the work also wanted a best practice solution.

Later, I went to work for a large consulting firm and was part of a thought leadership group. The senior partners were always asking us to present our firm’s best practices in knowledge management to clients. We would groan and try to offer case examples of successes instead. Often we got away with this switch.

It was better to try to sell the fact that we had done the work successfully before, what happen and why, than to try to say that we had the secret recipe of best practices.  Of course, if you are trying to staff projects with new recruits who provide higher margins for the firm, it was better to say that you were arming them with the secret recipes.

Based on my experience, I agree with Luis that best practices can do more harm that good.  This does not mean that there cannot be lessons learned and some starting points to keep in mind as you move to new work.  There are great benefits to doing something the second time.  The German sociologist Georg Simmel wrote, “nothing more can be attempted that to establish the beginning and the direction of an infinitely long road. The pretension of any systematic and definitive completeness would be, at least, a self-illusion. Perfection can here be obtained by the student only in the subjective sense that he communicates everything he has been able to see.”

Post script: When I coached my daughter's soccer (aka football) team during her elementary school years, I created a guide book of plays for the girls (e.g., try to throw the inbound pass up field). However, i found what worked best was to hold practice games and frequently stop the action and call the girls' attention to what just happen, the results, and what to think about next time. Part of the guidance was to keep things moving in the right direction but look and think before you act. This was simply what worked for me and I am certainly not an expert in soccer. In hindsight it followed the approach offered above. 

 

Comments

[Bertrand Duperrin]

I totally agree.

Last month I found myself very uncomfortable when preparing my workshop for the E 2.0 forum in Paris. I was supposed to make some things about "best practices" and I realized the how the woerd seemed irrelevant to me.
Then I decided to say "things that work"...but I was not quite satisfied with that. So I chose "Things to be aware of to find what will work for you".

Best practices have to be replaced with context awareness...what seems much more relevant in our contexts.

[Jordan Frank]

I'll agree in principal - A best practice in E2.0 or KM is as elusive as a best business model - the "Walmart model" (locate big stores away from huge urban centers where KMart and similar were entrenched) has a lot to teach but, in principal, can only work once: for Walmart.

A best practice as a map for how to approach a particular process or problem is not necessarily reproducible. I'm involved in 5-10 different e2.0 deployments in any given week and its a rare day when someone asks me a "how" question and I can give a definitive answer.

Part of the problem is uniqueness of each environment and, somewhere at play is a "not invented here" situation where, despite all logic, any set of people are more comfortable with a process or practice if it emerges from their own thinking.

What consultants, vendors and thought leaders of any stripe may repeatably bring to the table is strategic thinking and framework approaches which tend to support the thinking process. Key starting points are strategies and frameworks for naming spaces or defining Tags in a KM or E2.0 system.

For example: when setting up a system, do you organize spaces by Business unit or by Market? If you are in Pharma, is each Market space as narrow as a disease (Psoriasis) or as wide as a therapeutic area (Dermatology, in general)? Simple choices can have a large impact on outcomes. I can't make these decisions for a customer. Rather, I can guide them through scenarios and help them come to their own insight on the right "practice."

I've done a series of talks on tagging strategies, the latest being this one at KMWorld's Taxonomy Boot Camp. The PDF of the presentation is provided by link at the end of this entry:

http://traction.tractionsoftware.com/traction/permalink/Press504

[jheuristic]

Hi –

I was roundly criticized and lambasted for flatly rejecting 'best practices' for KM in the 1990s at HP and other companies. It is why I conceived the notion of “Next Practices.” Its why we lead the global Next Practices Network for KM.

Next practices are KM methods, techniques, services and technologies applied in highly contextualized and future-focused settings to achieve the most favorable outcomes. Next practices are people focused, emergent and depend on variation, mutation, evolution and complexity to achieve stunning business results and breakthough innovation.

For E20 deployment it is futile and ludicrous to attempt deployments without a solid foundation of the social network structures that underlie and comprise all enterprise 2.0 activities. (Yeah, go ahead, deride and laugh now, just like you all did in the 1995, but mark my words, your will all starting projects with detailed network analysis very soon.)

Network analytics are the predominate Next Practices for KM and will be years to come.

Remember, the KM mantra – “It’s about connection not collection!” Or, if you prefer, the James Carville version, “It’s the network, stupid.”

Here are Next Practices Action/Research Clusters for KM.

http://futureofnetworks.com/

-j

[bill Ives]

Thanks Bertrand, Jordan, and John for your extensive and thoughtful comments.

[fayez]

Hi BillIves,

Thanks a lot for the post, it is very informative and useful. But what do you think that make pest practise does not work with KM and it is deferent from other filed like software engineering. Thanks again for this wonderful blog.

Cheers
Fayez

[JWilfong]

Bill-

It seems that people, especially those with either limited time or limited resources, which I guess is most managers these days, want to speed up the change management process a bit.

Well, social systems are very complex and require research, time, and most importantly understanding. Best practices, a term which I usually equate to large firms wishing to brand their research as somehow, well, "best," fail to take into account the uniqueness of each client.

True, there are good ways to do things from the experiences and trials of many organizations, but as you point out, it is necessary to think about this adoption trend.

I think we are at a pivotal time right now, with E2.0 adoption and geniune potential of changing the way organizations "do" collaboration, learning, and innovation. My hope is that the large firms recognize that they are only studying a certain aspect of the debate, and need to broaden understanding before prematurely calling their work "Best Practices." I would like to see more partnerships and collaborations between research outfits that have strengths in certain areas. What we need is a better model, and I am not sure anyone has the best approach out there...

I am actually trying to study some of this right now at E2.0 Pros, and would love to access those of which Forrester (or others) has researched. I want to refine the discussion a bit and get more qualitative understanding about company uniqueness and trials from which they learned.

Very best,

Jeff Wilfong
http://e20pros.com