Copy Me!

Who hasn't done it? Most of us have! Businesses pride themselves on still doing it! ...and it's so common, you don't even question whether what you do is the best thing to do or not! So... what the hell am I talking about?


It goes by a number of names, the one you'll most likely know is " best practices" or the "sharing of best practices". In short, the idea is to gather together people who are deemed experts in their role. You have these experts share their best practices with a Team Leader or Manager, the practices are captured and then passed onto staff through the training & development arm of the business to the larger needy group of lower performers. All this is done in the hope that this will raise the level of competencies across the team or business to mirror those demonstrated by their top performers. Ultimately in a hope of increased productivity, revenue and efficiency.

So what's the problem with this approach? Everyone's doing it, so it must be right! Right?

Wrong!!!

Flawed from the Start

The technique is flawed from one very important angle.

The sharing of best practices is predominantly a behavioural skills approach. You find out what they "do" and then you teach those skills to others. Sounds pretty useful but lacks a very important ingredient. It lacks the specific mental attitude that supports the behaviour, that's being shared. It's a bit like copying the European styling and interior design of a high performing car, but not supplying it with a motor! Crazy? Yes, exactly, yet this is what's being done when we share best practices without the supporting mindset that drives these high performers to do what they do so well.

By modelling best practices and then delivering them via trainings, in the hope of raising the performance bar across an organisation, although it works to some degree, is destined for disaster. This strategy will work for those who have the right attitude but lack the internal skill sets for those staff who do not have the right attitude.

Many thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of training dollars, are wasted on attempting to elevate performance within an organisation byway of the sharing of best practices, when, what is needed, is the modelling of the specific mental framework that supports the best practices (with every behaviour there is an equal degree of attitude that drives it).

How do we do that?
It's highly likely that you don't have the skills to do this. This is a specialist skill set and not found on any corporate street corner. It's easy to copy the high performers behaviours because you can observe them. How do you copy and distribute an attitude? This is where a person with skills in mental modelling is required and they require the ability to also package this information and train others to gain similar results. The ability to succinctly identify the structure that drives the person to do what they do, and do it so well, is a must.

The sharing of best practices can improve performance, no doubt. That is actually the problem - it does work to some degree, and in doing so a corporate seduction occurs, that this is the right thing to do. It is not!

Model what they do internally, copy their attitude, beliefs, understandings, identity, value systems, what they count and discount as they perform, and much, much more. This is where the juice is for an organisation who wants to raise their performance to the next level of business excellence. Copy their best practices, mental framework and then package it in such a way that individual transfer will definitely take place. Do this and you will separate yourself from the "copy me" approach that is so prominent in business and sports today.

Use the same approach to your recruitment process and say good bye to employing the wrong person. Hard to believe? Then contact me.

For more details on applying this approach to your business contact me on 027 4774 560

Bye for now...