Croeso

That won't work for me

The greatest issue in a global company (i.e. many locations spread all over the world) concerning Best Practise replication, is that people always focus on the differences in their situations instead of looking at the synergies.
To postulate of the reasons behind this is always enlightening.

- It could be just a defence mechanism to ward away any more work, as people are busy enough already.
- Just plane copying from each other is not so satisfying as designing a solution/improvement yourself.
- The work to compare and contract the 'best method' is actually way moire than implementing something yourself.
- A strong sense of local pride means every one must be seen as the best practise site not as a best practise adopter
- Things are too different locally, and cannot be easily changed due to local legislation and / or the huge investments needed to make them similar

Most companies do not rigorously apply standards from one location to another and certainly not from one country to another, but do actively seek to improve the business collectively learning from the leading parts of the organisation.

This is very tricky to actually achieve as it is not as many casual observers think and the fact that we just need to tell people what to do! Many informed observers also think this way see link1 & link2 here in Croeso.
These view completely the miss the point that we do not work in similar ways and when we build thing we design them to suit the working methods of the day. So if we build a factory in the 80s and try and compare it to one built last year - you see what I mean. OK we can upgrade the factory but some fundamental limitations remain (space, access, etc) - just as one example.

So we need to focus on adoption of improvements where they fit and have challenge sessions (lightweight) where peoples repel button is triggered. The improvements must be well thought through and have enough flexibility in them to enable global take up. I feel getting people working similarly is a 3/4 stage process, we need to get everyone on the same playing surface and then you can really start to compare apples and pears.

I'll blog further on this in days to come

Best Practises & CoPs

Well I planned to blog this week and into next on the holy grail of KM, best practise replication, but since watching the horrors unfold in the Russian school I'm somewhat distracted this evening. So I'll just start the subject off tonight.

Why is it we find it hard to replicate best practise from one place to another?

Reasons that come to my mind from years of dabbling in and on the edges of this topic are:

We are human and not machines, therefor we are happier when given room to express ourselves instead of slavishly following others.
It's OK for them to do that but we have a different situation.
That isn't the best practise cos it won't work here!
Those people wouldn't know a best practise if one came up and bit them on the arse!
Its assign of weakness/lesser ability if your following others - we are born to lead
It's dull mostly copying others (There is an artist in the heart of all of us)
etc

A colleague of mine and I today had a reasonably long chat about this , around the topic of when a good or best practise is posted to a CoP why don't people just pick it up and run with it. The examples we know and what we apply ourselves must push, prod, remind and challenge people to assess an idea and report back what they are doing with it. CoPs it seems are good to debate and take from what you will, but driving common working methodologies and common practises CoPs miss something. We concluded it was the formal line management control structures that they lack. CoPs are at their best when they host an egalitarian society, not a bunch of yes people. For best practise replication surely you need yes people.

So can the 2 exist?

Yes and no I feel, but that's for tomorrow

Oh those poor kids, parents, and soldiers in Russia, what a terrible terrible day for them all