When ‘Best Practices’ Backfire

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2017

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Freek Vermeulen, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, argues that too many companies are following so-called best practices that are actually holding them back. They do it because of deep-seated industry tradition—and because it’s hard to know how seemingly successful business models will hold up over the long term. That’s why, he says, organizations should avoid benchmarking and instead routinely test their business practices before there’s a problem. Vermeulen is the author of “Breaking Bad Habits: Defy Industry Norms and Reinvigorate Your Business.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	When leadership advice feels like buzzwords and platitudes, it's time to get real.
0:05.9	HPR's podcast Coaching Real Leaders brings you behind closed doors as Muriel Wilkins coaches anonymous
0:11.9	leaders through raw honest career questions
0:14.6	that we all face.
0:15.9	Listen and follow coaching real leaders for free
0:18.3	wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review, I'm Sarah Green-Myall.
0:35.1	Before I came to HBR, I worked at a bookstore in Harvard Square, shelving titles and
0:39.6	processing returns.
0:41.4	When I'd order books from publishing houses, I didn't worry about getting too many, since if our
0:45.5	customers didn't buy them, we could always just ship them back. That's just how it's done in the
0:49.8	industry. Book buyback guarantees are one of many management practices that our guests today says don't make any commercial sense. Freak Vermeulan, who teaches strategy and entrepreneurship at the London Business School urges managers to ask themselves
1:04.4	why their organizations are doing what they're doing.
1:07.9	Because bad management practices spread like viruses, posing as good ideas, and even as best practices.
1:14.5	In his new book, Breaking Bad Habits, Rummulan explains how these practices emerge,
1:19.6	persist, and take down companies and even industries. And while he admits they're hard to spot he tells managers what
1:26.6	warning signs they should be looking out for.
1:28.8	Freke thank you so much for joining us today.
1:31.2	Of course, thank you Sarah. I think it's interesting that there is
1:34.5	value in shaking up your organization and yet it is something that people really
1:40.5	push back against, they really don't like to do it even when there's a compelling reason to
1:44.4	change people often resist change why do you think that is something that we do
1:50.6	well change of course is inevitable I guess the only time a company wouldn't have to change is if it's in a perfectly stable business, and no business is perfectly stable.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.