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Case studies and fables
After two weeks of spending all my time on preparing a BIG tender sumbission, I came across a link to this HBR article on Dave Snowden's blog this morning.
We believe that businesses have become addicted to prescription - mindlessly copying the latest best practice or case study. Very seldom do we come across leaders who are trailblazers, preferring to be the firs ones to venture into a new area. Usually we're asked the question: So, where has this been done before? Everyone seems to want a fail-safe recipe.
I think this paragraph brings the point across quite eloquently ...
"This doesn’t mean you should necessarily dismiss the advice offered in success studies. The authors are savvy observers of the business world. Their recommendations can be useful, but only in the way that fables are. No one reads “The Tortoise and the Hare” and, faced with a chance to bet on such a race, chooses the tortoise. Rather, people take from this tale the idea that there is merit in perseverance while arrogance can lead to a downfall. Similarly, success studies should be treated not as how-to manuals but as sources of inspiration and fuel for introspection. Their value is not in what you read in them but what you read into them."
Of course they both have their place...flying a jet with 300 passengers on a routine hop kinda dictates that the pilot follows best practice, and years of research and analysis have shown what not to do in flying (and to appear on 60 seconds to disaster).
However, when faced with a change in the game, eg. two geese in two engines, a radical departure is necessary to land safely in the Hudson River, where there is no best practice to draw upon.
Too often in business, we seek to maintain/improve the existing recipe, today's revenue, which is why new thinking struggles to take root - the swin(dl)e flu to a organisation's status quo health. To shift the game slightly, do R&D - Rob & Develop ideas and models from other domains, to help shed new insight on one's generally insular, best-practice driven environment.
Innovation doesn't have to be new to the world, just new to YOUR world. Go seek those analogies, but as the post says, use them as alternative lenses to your situation, as a heuristic, not a silver bullet.
Simon de Haast
www.ideafarm.co.za
Thanks for the great comment Simon. You make some very valid points. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that we use the Cynefin framework, it assists you to know the type of problem you're dealing with and how to select an appropriate response, i.e. do we need a well-practised formula, or do we need novel new ways of doing things.
We firmly believe that best practice has its place, it must be applied in the correct contexts though, as with all intervention methods. Something we term bounded diversity - theories and practices are all correct, within boundaries and applied in the right context.