Enterprises operating in dynamic environments need to improve their performance and maintain competitive advantage. Adopting practices in industry-wide use can help to improve capability. The term ‘best practice’ generally refers to the ‘best possible way of doing
something’. As a concept, it was first raised as long ago as 1919, but it was
popularised in the 1980s through Tom Peters’ books on business management.
The idea behind best practice is that one creates a specification for what is
accepted by a wide community as being the best approach for any given situation. Then, one can compare actual job performance against these best practices and determine whether the job performance was lacking in quality somehow.
Alternatively, the specification for best practices may need updating to include lessons learned from the job performance being graded.
Enterprises should not be trying to ‘implement’ any specific best practice, but adapting and adopting it to suit their specific requirements. In doing this, they may also draw upon other sources of good practice, such as public standards and frameworks, or the proprietary knowledge of individuals and other enterprises as illustrated in Figure 1.1.