Best practice versus next practice

This post from Derek Wenmouth really captured my thinking.

 I have never been a great believer in the concept of ‘best practice’. In fact, it sits somewhere just beneath my contempt for the terms ‘world class’ and ‘value added’. None of these phrases are applied generally in a way that benefits the ultimate users.

For example, rather than utilise a tool or process that is sold to me as being ‘best practice’, i’d rather be told it is ‘proven good practice’ with the evidence to support that. (Maybe it is my past life as an accountant catching up with me…I need some empirical evidence!)

The concept of next practice grips my imagination precisely because it involves the utilisation of imagination in its creation. It is like a mashup between ‘proven good practice’, ‘desired outcomes’, and ‘future opportunities not yet available’, filtered by relevance and quality (I feel a yahoo pipe coming on!).

As Derek’s post beautifully puts it:
“At worst, the best-practice approach leads to “doing things right rather than doing the right things. As cited in the presentation; Best Practice asks “What is working?”, while Next Practice asks “What could work – more powerfully?”"