Industry has a view of best practices that seems to be more like the “right recipe.” Healthcare has a similar view in that it wants a “cookbook” whose recipes work most of the time. In addition to having bodies that appear to run somewhat like machines, human beings have minds, which support psychologies that work in non-linear ways. Machines, on the other hand, appear to be mindless and more amenable to the “cookbook” approach to production etc. But the cookbook for producing these inanimate, linear devices is created by people and used by people. Regardless of our choice of profession, and the behaviors that we engage each day at work, we all want/need meaning in our lives. When our co-workers or bosses cut corners, shirk their responsibilities, or flat out break the law, they create the possibility for our integrity to be challenged. What do we do then? The interesting thing is that many times we simply complain; we don’t act in a meaningful way like reporting the actions or quitting our jobs. We offer up myriad excuses for our lack of action.
Chris Argyris from Harvard and others have written about the gap between what we espouse and what we actually do. With that stuff in mind, the Best Practices model creates an interesting space for considering the balance between the science supporting development, the espoused theories for why the company exists and that for which it stands, the fact/desire to get a product out there that can compete as well as keep the customer happy, and the customer who wants the best that can be produced.
Standing just outside the model, waiting in the wings, are the bottom line and the competitors. Neither of which seems to care one iota about whether your company lives up to its espoused ethical standards for making sure that your product actually does what you say it can do - and in the ways that you say it can do it. But the solution to success with integrity lies within the cornerstones, edges and faces of the model. Keep in mind that the model is an idealized set of relationships designed to generate discussion about how things are, and how they might be. It is non-linear and will support very complex considerations.
A Best Practices model can also be viewed from the organizational DNA perspective. It looks into who you are as a company (philosophy), who you serve (clients), how you serve them (art), and how you decide about goodness of your product (science). The faces of the pyramid consider structure, politics, the human beings, and the symbolism. I like this Best Practices model because it allows each person to see himself as an individual within the model in addition to extrapolating out to the entire organization.
