Are "Best Practices" really "Exemplary Practices"?

Date last updated 8:37 am Mar 26th, 2008

For years we have been talking about sharing and emulating "Best Practices." At the risk of getting caught up in semantics, I have witnessed a couple of situations recently where the identification of best practices caused conflict in an organization. Co-workers who were also highly effective were apparently disincented by someone else's concept being recognized as "The" best practice. The implication was that there could only be one. My suggestion was that the organization tweek the terminology and reward "Exemplary Practices." thereby reinforcing the concept that in many cases is more than one valuable and effective path to achieving the same goal.