Best Practice
Be effective and efficient
To our mind, an essential phrase that should be widely used is:
Effective and Efficient (in that order of importance)
We recommend viewing all of your existing practices through the lens of being effective and efficient.
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Effective means to achieve the best outcome.
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Efficient means to achieve it in the best possible way.
The most important thing is to be effective. Organizations -can- function with effective workflows that are performed inefficiently. Even if you don’t have the fanciest whizz bang automation, having a well documented, clear process (say, as checklist) is always the foundation.
Organizations can survive, even thrive, in spite of being inefficient but the consequences are time, expense and negative impact on morale where frustration builds, particularly amongst high performers who can see a better way. Inefficiency ultimately burns cash and people.
Reject the 'metric-driven' dogma
You might occasionally encounter dogma about the value of metrics (particularly around strategy):
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"If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it"
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"We’re metric/data driven"
For example, it seems pretty hard-baked into conventional OKR methodology.
At those times, it’s worth knowing that this dogma likely stems from mis-portrayal of what W. Edwards Deming (of the iconic text "The Deming Management Method") actually said.
It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it - a costly myth.
The New Economics
Whether you want to describe reality quantitatively or qualitatively is entirely down to your best judgement of what’s feasible, practical and valuable.