What does ‘best practice’ mean for tech leaders in 2021?

The term ‘best practice’ is certainly one of the most misused in business and technology circles today. At times, one wonders whether it’s almost become a euphemism for never mind the details, and ‘nothing to see here’, while some of the most ill-fated plans can be conceived with the best of ‘best practice’ intentions. To sensible minds, best practice has a very specific meaning, implying at least a collection of tasks that improve – ideally maximise – the efficiency or effectiveness of the core business and / or a process that supports it. It should also be something that’s able to be executed, as well as being replicable, transferable, and adaptable across industries. But as you’ll hear in this episode the term best practice is losing its currency and indeed its relevance, as organisations adjust to the new realities of doing business today – with greater agility and ingenuity - and in particular given the large number of massive failures that continue to occur with alarming regularity. Respected industry authority and CIO Show regular, Rowan Dollar views the term as something that’s often used to claim ‘plausible deniability’ when things go awry, standing almost as a 21st century parody of the famous ad slogan ‘No one ever got fired for buying IBM’. CIOs serious about steering their organisations through the current turbulence should push back against vendors’ fondness for the term best practice, and demand to know what it means and what they’re paying for. Dollar says the last 20-plus years have been defined by practices that have become more synonymous with failure than success, with a worrying trend towards neglecting redundancy and resilience – often as cost-cutting measures, magnified during the GFC – now laid bare during COVID-19. Echoing this sentiment, IDC country manager for New Zealand, Louise Francis feels blind adherence to nebulous ideas of best practice have actually slowed many organisations down, impeding agility and innovation. Yet she highlights sectors from manufacturing and retail to transport and logistics, healthcare and education that were arguably hurt most by the pandemic, as offering examples of heightened agility and resilience that may well help rewrite the playbooks of the future. Francis also notes that tech success today is increasingly defined by key issues that weren’t priorities when the term best practice entered the mainstream decades ago, in particular ethics, climate change, sustainability and diversity.

You can listen to What does ‘best practice’ mean for tech leaders in 2021? online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

What does ‘best practice’ mean for tech leaders in 2021? is an episode from The CIO Australia Show by FoundryCo.

This episode is 33:11 long.

This episode was published on Oct 6, 2021.

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