2.1 Definition of Best Practice

This short definition needs further clarification: see Table 2.1.

Table 2.1 Explanation of the definition of Best Practice

2.2 Key Concepts in the Definition of a Best Practice

• Technique, working method, or activity
   Often interpreted freely by the user, this element defines the process and describes how the outcome is achieved. These activities also include measurement methods, calibration methods, procedures, audit methods, evaluations, etc. Each can individually be a Best Practice.
• More effective and better outcomes
   There is only one best method. You compare yourself against the best and not the average. The aim is to obtain the best result and outcome.
• Comparison
   A comparison with the best for a given subject prevents complacency and provides opportunities for further learning.

Although our definition is very short, it includes the characteristics to be put into practice before a key process can be considered as a Best Practice. The remainder of this book describes the required characteristics and shares a proprietary set of tools with which to assess whether a process can be declared a Best Practice.

The terms described as part of the Best Practice definition above focus on an approach and result that propels your organization to the highest level of achievement.

2.3 Characteristics of a Best Practice

Complimentary to our definition of Best Practice are some additional attributes of a Best Practice:

• It produces consistent, measurable, reliable, and excellent results for the organization.
• It is executed effectively within the organization.
• It improves the organization’s performance.
• It places the company in a top percentile ranking within its industry.
• It leverages and takes advantage of technology and innovation.
• It improves quality and speed, thereby lowering costs.
• It gives management more control and influence.
• It is led by the leaders of the organization, usually, the owner of the key process.

2.4 Best Practice versus Best Technical Product

To clarify our target for Best Practices, we are not referring to the use of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which serve to provide a very specific written procedure used to perform a job function, whether that is an assembly of a product or a machine or an administrative procedure. These functions might collectively be part of a larger system within the company and therefore part of a process, but they are not targets for our pursuit of Best Practices in the scope of this book.

There is often confusion between the concepts of Best Practice (process based) and Best Technical Product (product based). In the former, we look at the whole process and how this process delivers excellent and sustainable results in line with the strategy of the company. In the latter, the product or installation remains the center of interest. The focus is now put on exceptional technical characteristics and performances. In this book, we describe only Best Practices, i.e. the processes that are the best available and that deliver excellent results.

A Best Practice is always clearly linked to a process, i.e. management of a key process. “Key” means those processes which contribute in a positive way to achieving the strategy and which deliver excellent results.

High-performance products, procedures, and standards are a part of the success of the company. Quite often, high-performance products are produced thanks to modern, reliable, and sophisticated machines. This doesn’t mean that the whole process and organization are managed at its optimum. You can comply completely with standards (think about the ISO 9001 standard) and not be at a Best Practice level for the processes audited.

2.5 BEST-Method and BEST-Tool

The BEST-tool, described in detail in Chapter 3, provides a stable structure supporting fluid content. The BEST-method is a universal approach to identifying the characteristics of a process that delivers excellent results.

The remainder of this chapter includes the following topics:

• BEST-method and BEST-tool
• Documenting a Best Practice
• Measurement of Excellence (Enablers and Results)
• Enabler
• The Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)-method
• Results
• Organizational maturity
• Benefits of the BEST-tool
• Use of case studies for demonstrating the BEST-tool
• Why we use older case studies
• Conclusion

BEST is an acronym for: “a Better way to Excellent results and Success through the application of an appropriate Tool.”

The BEST-method is an approach that explains what is necessary to assess or to write a Best Practice. It contains definitions, explanations of criteria, characteristics, how to use and interpret the assessment checklists, examples, tips, and tricks.

If the BEST-method is correctly used, it allows management to make gradual improvements in their journey to excellence, i.e. the achievement of excellent and sustainable results.

Skeptical people could argue that the BEST-method isn’t realistic. On the contrary, it is only through a structured, consistent set of criteria that process owners can verify that their process is truly a Best Practice. With no standardized instrument, tool, or method to identify a Best Practice, any process can be touted as one. Therefore, there must be a measurement instrument to verify to what extent a Best Practice is a true Best Practice.

2.6 Documenting a Best Practice

It is important to understand why Best Practices need to be documented. Identifying and properly documenting a Best Practice eases its adoption by other areas and by other teams. This facilitation of benchmarking with a comprehensive Best Practice is an unmet need in business today. Chapter 4 describes the process for writing a Best Practice that contains enough information for a benchmarking partner to gain insight for their own improvement efforts.

A documented Best Practice is also necessary for the following reasons:

• To make a distinction between intention and fact-based evidence.
• To see quickly (see the application of the BEST-tools in Chapter 3) where you can make further improvements.
• To use the Best Practice for internal training purposes.
• To compare the process with external benchmarks.

An example of a standardized format for documenting a Best Practice is given in Figure 2.1.

An overall summary of 13 items for a standardized format of a Best Practice is:

1. 1. Enabler (the method for developing the process)
2. 2. Results (measures of effectiveness)
3. 3. Process (the flow of the activities to be improved)
4. 4. Format (the structure of a Best Practice description: the format is the organization of components 1, 2, and 3)

The detail of these four building blocks is described in Chapter 3 of this book.

When a Best Practice is written effectively, it becomes a well-honed and focused document – the centerpiece of an effective approach to smashing through barriers to Best Practice adoption. It is not the whole journey to a successful benchmarking activity. However, a Best Practice is the basis for the gap analysis that offers the benchmarking partner an opportunity for improvement. A Best Practice and a gap analysis are the planning portion of benchmarking. Implementation is up to the benchmarking partner. This book provides details for assessing a Best Practice. The benchmarking process itself is beyond the scope of this work and is adequately covered in other materials, beginning in 1989 with the works of Bob Camp and others.^*

* See also: Camp, Robert. Global Cases in Benchmarking; Best Practices from Organizations Around the World, ASQ Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI, (1998).

2.7 Measurement of Excellence

A Best Practice is a model – a reference to a specific area of performance. But we still have questions: What is an excellent method? What is an excellent result? If we can determine the degree of excellence, a Best Practice will be more readily accepted by others as being excellent. You can then better assess objectively what method or outcome offers the best results.

2.8 Enabler

The degree of excellence for an enabler (method, approach) is evaluated among organizations ascribing to the EFQM-model^* by using the RADAR tool.^† The US Department of Commerce has developed the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Model. Another common approach is through the PDCA improvement cycle. Since not all organizations are familiar with either the European or US performance excellence models, the authors have chosen to use a more universal Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)-approach.

* EFQM stands for European Foundation for Quality Management. The EFQM Excellence Model allows Managers and Leaders to understand the cause and effect relationships between what their organization does and the results it achieves.

† RADAR stands for Results, Approaches, Deploy and Assess & Refine. RADAR-method is part of the EFQM-Model. The RADAR logic is a dynamic assessment framework and powerful management tool that provides a structured approach to questioning the performance of an organization. Van Nuland, Yves, Broux, Georges, Crets, Luc, De Cleyn, Wim, Legrand, Jan, Majoor, Guy and Vleminckx, Gaston. Excellent: A Guide for the Implementation of the EFQM-Excellence Model, Comatech, Belgium, (1999) p. 31.

The key steps involved in the implementation and evaluation of quality improvement efforts are symbolized by the PDCA-cycle. The goal is to engage in a continuous endeavor to learn about all aspects of a process and then use this knowledge to change the process to reduce variation and complexity and to improve the level of process performance. Process improvement begins by understanding how customers define quality, how processes work, and how understanding the variation in those processes can lead to wise management action.^‡

‡ Westcott, Russell T. and Duffy, Grace L. The Certified Quality Improvement Associate Handbook, 3rd ed., Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI, (2015) p. 78.

This text suggests the PDCA-approach^§ for documenting an original Best Practice, and then it uses a freeform approach to assess a Best Practice for improvements. There are many improvement methods available, such as Six Sigma,^¶ Lean Enterprise,^⁑ Quality Function Deployment,^†† Quality Management Systems,^‡‡ and others. The PDCA-approach is used as it offers a more universally recognized, simple way to organize thoughts around an improvement sequence.

§ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA.

¶ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma accessed 12/23/2019.

⁑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_enterprise accessed 12/23/2019.

†† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_function_deployment accessed 12/23/2019.

‡‡ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_management_system accessed 12/23/2019.

2.9 The PDCA-Method

The four steps in the PDCA-cycle are described in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2 PDCA-method

The criteria for implementing and documenting Best Practice approaches using the PDCA-approach are described in detail in Chapter 3.

2.10 Results

Assessing the results of a Best Practice process is done by a completely different set of criteria. The checklist in Figure 2.2 is designed to estimate the degree of excellence of the results obtained through the implementation of a Best Practice process(es). This checklist consists of seven criteria.

Results are outputs and outcomes achieved by your organization. Results are evaluated based on current performance; performance relative to appropriate comparisons; the rate, breadth, and importance of performance improvements; and the relationship of measures of results to key organizational performance requirements.^*

* Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, Criteria for Performance Excellence, 2013–2014, p. 49, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), United States Department of Commerce, January 2013.

Of the 13 recommended components of a Best Practice as shown in Figure 2.1 the Measurement component deserves strong focus. Many writers of a Best Practice do not know where to begin to quantitatively describe the results of their process excellence and why their approach should be classified as a Best Practice.

Companies and organizations are different, and the context where a Best Practice is implemented is also different. Therefore, a quality manager can argue that he has a Best Practice in his situation. The questions remain: How does he know, and can he measure that Best Practice? How can he objectively assume that his approach is an excellent method? The BEST-tool gives the answer to these questions.

Measures and indicators are numerical information that quantifies the input, output, and performance dimensions of processes, programs, projects, services, and the overall organization (outcomes). Measures and indicators might be simple (derived from one measurement) or composite.^*

* Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, Criteria for Performance Excellence, 2013–2014, p. 47, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), United States Department of Commerce, January 2013.

It is important to measure and verify the results of a Best Practice and the way these results are achieved, i.e. process description. Everyone who is familiar with Total Quality Management (TQM) knows that process management is essential in the journey to excellence. There needs to be a clear linkage between strategy and business plan as well as process management and the corresponding results. This is something we do not see in the description of many case studies written as Best Practices.

The authors assessed more than 30 so-called “Best Practices” with the BEST Quick Scan tool. They have noted that the majority of so-called Best Practices give only a description of their enabler (method or approach). They didn’t give the corresponding results or a process description. The only thing that can be deduced is that the case study is a nice method but not a Best Practice.

The strength of Chapter 6 is that it illustrates how the BEST Quick Scan tool serves as a pragmatic method to quickly screen whether a case study is a true Best Practice. All ten case studies we assess in Chapter 6 purported to be a Best Practice. Chapter 6 illustrates the importance of writing clearly about the target process and how results are measured. The BEST-tool is, as far as the authors know, the only method that provides a measure for the degree of excellence of a Best Practice. As a result of our assessment of numerous case studies, we now look first for whether the document includes a description of results before diving into the other criteria for a Best Practice.

Note that an excellent result is one that simultaneously meets all seven criteria described in Figure 2.2. If you can prove a 75% performance level for each of the seven criteria, it can confidently be said that the process provides a Best Practice result. It is difficult to achieve 100% compliance to all characteristics, i.e. that it can be shown how this approach is put into practice with many concrete examples. When a Best Practice has a 75% score for (nearly) all criteria (Quick Scan) and all characteristics (detailed BEST-tool), we can safely say that it is a Best Practice. We are not looking for the ideal world where everything is perfect. That does not exist. Furthermore, if a company scores itself at a full 100%, this might suggest a defensive company culture where management is trying to manipulate the data.

Organizational culture has a tremendous impact on the way we think and behave. Human Synergistics developed a method to measure these thinking styles. There are basically two different thinking styles: defensive and constructive. In a defensive mode, people might readily assume that they have a Best Practice without being factual and precise. In a constructive culture, they are in a learning mode, i.e. they are open to feedback and they learn from others (benchmarking) and from other sources. In the constructive mode, they are eager to apply the BEST-method to investigate the degree of excellence of their approach. Only when they have confirmation that their approach is excellent, they will call it a Best Practice.^*

* www.humansynergistics.com (Subject: Organizational Culture Inventory) accessed 2/19/18.

In a constructive company culture, a supportive environment exists, i.e. leaders help their subordinates to learn and improve their processes. In a defensive culture, Best Practices are used to impress others.

2.11 Organizational Maturity

This is item 7 of Figure 2.1. It is important to note that the BEST-tool is presented in its most rigorous form. Most organizations are not at the level of development to experience the total benefit of implementing all the criteria or characteristics of the full-blown BEST-tool. Best Practices and benchmarking should be scaled depending upon the maturity of the organization.

Watts Humphrey’s original Process Maturity Framework and most additional maturity models focus on transforming the organizational environment in which Best Practices are performed.^† The original Capability Maturity Model (CMM) was a roadmap of Best Practices in software engineering accompanied with Best Practices in project and organizational management required to sustain them. Such descriptions give the reader a sense of how a collection of Best Practices might grow over time. Most of these models give little guidance on the specific steps to be taken to progress up the maturity levels.

† Curtis, Bill and Alden, John, BPM and Organizational Maturity, BPTrends Column, October 2007.

Figure 2.3 shows the progression of the five maturity levels, including characteristics of each level. This model provides a useful tool for organizations to understand their current level of maturity and progression, leading to higher levels of business maturity.

A similar model can be applied to better understand levels of maturity of an organizational system and can help companies develop an improvement plan based on their current level of maturity and desired future state:

• The maturity of the company’s business environment will have an impact on its ability to successfully implement process improvement efforts (either incremental or radical).
• Similarly, an effort to improve processes is probably futile if the very basic elements that are needed to support effective process management are not in place.

Companies need to implement effective quality management and process management systems before any serious improvement initiative is considered.^*

* Ibid.

Process improvement models are examples of specific steps to improve and move from one maturity level to another. Just as process improvement approaches require different levels of knowledge about process, information, people, technology, and systems integration, so do the evolving levels of organizational maturity.

The characteristics of process improvement models from simple PDCA and problem solving through increasingly more complex models, such as Cost of Quality,^† Lean,^‡ Six Sigma,^§ Balanced Scorecard,^¶ and Best Practice Recognition,^⁑ align effectively with the different levels of organizational maturity. Senior management must select appropriate process improvement models based on their company’s level of maturity and leadership style.

† Douglas C. Wood, Cost of Quality is described well by the American Society for Quality in Principles of Quality Costs, 4th ed.: Financial Measures for Strategic Implementation of Quality Management, ASQ Quality Management Division, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-87389-849-2.

‡ Manos, Anthony and Vincent, Chad, editors. The LEAN Handbook: A Guide to the Bronze Certification Body of Knowledge, ASQ Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI, (2012).

§ Pyzdek, Thomas and Keller, Paul, The Six Sigma Handbook: A Complete Guide for Green Belts, Black Belts, and Managers at All Levels, 3rd ed., McGraw Hill, New York, (2010).

¶ Kaplan, Robert S. and Norton, D. P. The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, (1996). ISBN 978-0-87584-651-4.

⁑ www.apqc.org/ accessed 12/23/2019.

It is important to recognize that companies are at different levels of maturity in implementing process improvement concepts. It does not make sense to take a huge jump from a low level of maturity to a very sophisticated approach. This comment is not a slight on the intelligence of the senior management. It is an approach that recognizes that some companies put major efforts into different parts of the business, depending on their corporate culture or their customer requirements.^††

†† Duffy, G. L., Bridge the Gaps, Quality Progress Magazine, July 2017.

Matching different process improvement models to the level of organizational maturity described by CMM is illustrated in Figure 2.4.

In Figure 2.4 Level 1 is described as dysfunctional with minimal or no processes in place. At this stage, the organization experiences ­unstable processes that are poorly controlled. The organization is ­functioning in a reactive mode. At Level 2, appropriate process improvement models are Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), Problem Solving, and Customer Satisfaction.

The PDCA-cycle is a simple approach to address corrective action in the workplace. This model encourages observation and planning to identify the root cause of an error, plan a response, pilot the solution, measure the results, and then document the changes and new processes to hold the gains. This tool is a good beginning approach for an initial process definition in a Level 2 environment. The authors use the PDCA-cycle as the basis for the BEST-tool Enabler process because of its universal applicability across all levels of business maturity. Although improvement is not only a result of corrective action, the PDCA-cycle can be used for corrective action, general process improvement, and achievement of planned business objectives.

A legend for the tools identified in Figure 2.4 for improving Best Practice:

Each of the above process improvement approaches guides the implementer into higher levels of organizational and performance maturity. The tools recommended at higher maturity levels require data-based and quantitative performance measures for effective improvement.

Most benchmarking is done by more mature organizations. Not many ad hoc or CMMI^* Level 1 and Level 2 companies are prepared to perform a Best Practice assessment. This book provides a tool for assessing whether what one is doing as a process is a Best Practice and how that practice can be continuously improved.

* Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is a process level improvement training and appraisal program. CMMI defines the maturity levels for processes. Administered by the CMMI Institute, a subsidiary of ISACA, it was developed at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

A process is made up of linked activities with the purpose of producing a program or service for a customer (user) within or outside your organization. Generally, processes involve combinations of people, machines, tools, techniques, materials, and improvements in a defined series of steps or actions. Processes rarely operate in isolation and must be considered in relation to other processes that impact them. In some situations, processes might require adherence to a specific sequence of steps, with documentation (sometimes formal) of procedures and requirements, including well-defined measurement and control steps.^*

* Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, Criteria for Performance Excellence, 2013–2014, p. 48, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), United States Department of Commerce, January 2013.

Not every process needs to be developed into a Best Practice. Only a small number of critical processes contribute to the realization of a strategic plan. Most case studies and success stories published in journals or corporate newsletters are focused on recognition and project close out reports. A Best Practice requires a detailed analysis and documentation of critical information as described in this book (Chapters 5 and 6).

2.12 Benefits of the BEST-Tool

The BEST-tool provides a structure for an organization to assess its Best Practices to achieve excellent and sustainable results.

In our work over the past 40 years, the authors have made the following observations:

• Effectively documenting and measuring the outcomes of a Best Practice provide a confirmation that the organization does have an excellent approach and corresponding excellent results.
• Just calling a process a Best Practice does not make it one. Clear evidence of how the process is designed, how the process performs, and the effectiveness of the results must be provided.
• A Best Practice does not have to be perfect. The process has to deliver excellent results. It must provide enough information for benchmarking partners to assess their process against to complete a gap analysis.
• Sharing Best Practices allows the benchmarker to learn from other organizations.
• An excellent organization is an organization that produces excellent and sustainable results, but it also produces some true Best Practices.

When using a new method or approach, it is useful to ask the question, “What is the added value of the use of Best Practices?” The following are a few of the advantages:

• It provides better access to the improvement potential. It is a source of inspiration to find opportunities for improvement.
• It requires the process owner to keep learning. Processes are continuously under better control for achieving more sustainable results.
• It avoids reinventing the wheel. Benchmarkers learn from groups that have already proven how the method leads to excellent results.
• It helps define key performance indicators: “If they can do it, then we can do it too!”
• Larger organizations can easily compare performance across different entities (production centers, service centers, divisions, departments, etc.) and define common targets.
• A systematic application of the methodology of Best Practices facilitates growth towards an excellent organization.
• The use of Best Practices contributes to better achievement of the strategy of the organization.

Given the level of detail provided in the criteria and characteristics of the BEST-tool, the reader will perhaps find additional applications for the assessment beyond benchmarking. The BEST-tool for assessing and writing a Best Practice is described in Chapters 3 and 4. The structure for a Best Practice is synonymous with the development of a World Class process. The BEST-tool is also a good approach for designing a new process or for planning an extensive process redesign.

2.13 Use of Case Studies for Demonstrating the BEST-Tool

The authors realize the examples used in this book are taken from case studies written without access to the BEST-tool and that there was no intention on the part of the case study authors to be all inclusive in their documentation. This book and BEST-tool are offered to help those writing a full Best Practice to be inclusive in the information they provide to others. The high level of detail provided in the BEST-tool is also available to those who are looking to learn from a Best Practice. All the criteria and characteristics of a Best Practice are available for them to use to improve their own systematic performance.

The text for most of the case studies is not included in this book because to do so would make the volume enormous. Information for accessing the case studies is provided for each example.

2.14 Why We Use Older Case Studies

Advantages

• We can demonstrate our tool BEST Quick Scan and the detailed BEST-tool on real so-called Best Practices, even older ones.
• The application of the tool is independent of the number of years since the case study was written. The criteria of the BEST-tool do not include the characteristic of “age.”
• The authors expect that our BEST-method (and our book) will still be useful and valuable 10 years from now, although the case studies from 2019 will then be “10 years old.”
• This text assesses descriptions of a Best Practice. It is not an assessment of a benchmark. In the latter case, recent material needs to be used. Techniques are not always time independent.

Disadvantages

• Where a Best Practice depends upon technology for excellent results, it is possible that the concepts shared in the case study are no longer valid. The authors have attempted to filter out case studies where the process is not appropriate for our current readers.

Organizations implementing an excellence model (e.g. Malcolm Baldrige Award or EFQM-model) will apply one or even several ideas listed above. The authors note that leaders of most organizations talk about improving and learning, but rarely does the improvement happen in a structured and systematic manner. Structured means that the results are achieved step by step. Excellent results are achieved by proceeding methodically, i.e. the results are caused by a series of enabling activities. Systematic means that all departments, services, and teams use Best Practices to make improvements and progress. Systematic means also that the improving and learning process is part of everyday practice. A Best Practice allows executives to see how others put improvements into practice.

The references in the market today are old. Bob Camp did not recommend a format for writing or assessing the value of a Best Practice. His case studies are simply descriptions of processes without a consistent framework. This book takes Camp’s work to a more defined level.

2.15 Conclusion

Using the BEST-method is beneficial for the following reasons:

• Effectively documenting and measuring the outcomes of a process provides a confirmation that you have an excellent approach and corresponding excellent results.
• Sharing Best Practices allows the researcher to learn from other ­organizations that have excellent methods and corresponding results.
• It helps the organization avoid the blinders of only focusing internally for process improvement. If only comparing results internally, you would think the process cannot get better or it is difficult to see improvement opportunities.
• It is also a confirmation for the employees that they have worked well in achieving a Best Practice. This is motivating. They get appreciation from their management as well as third parties for their outstanding performance.

The objective of applying the BEST-method isn’t to prove that you have a Best Practice but to support you in your journey to excellence. The BEST-method guides you to make improvements to critical processes. We think that this is the most valuable point of our approach. The BEST-tool does not make judgments; it allows you to assess processes and results on your journey to excellence. This is done in a structured and pragmatic way using the BEST-tool.

Consider the perspective of a Chief Executive Officer in a competitive industry: assume you’re a CEO. There are two possibilities: either there are one or more Best Practices in your organization or there are none. In the former case the CEO makes use of the BEST-methodology to check whether there are truly Best Practices in his organization. He will discover quickly whether his managers are right to say that the organization has some Best Practices, or he will find out which opportunities for improvement the organization has. In the latter situation (no Best Practices present), he must ask himself if he can live with that situation. This means that the organization aims for mediocrity. Can shareholders (private company) or the government (public sector) accept an attitude of mediocrity? In the first instance, the shareholders miss income and in the second, it can be questioned whether public funds are being well spent.

A CEO could expect that his organization develops at least one new Best Practice every year. If not, he can ask himself, "Why not?" Is it due to a lack of priority, resources, training, etc.? In each case, it is a management controllable act. Therefore, it is up to the CEO to make the necessary decisions and to set up an action plan so that the organization moves forward in its journey to excellence.