Breaking Out Of The 'Best Practices' Ant Farm

Have you ever thought about why do do things the way that you do them? I mean, why you really do them?

All too often the given answer is "because it's best practice," but if we're honest, the real answer is "I don't know." A more correct answer may be "because I'm an ant."

In a series of experiments back in the mid-1980s, entomologists observed that when faced with two identical "paths" from a nest to a single food source, ants tended to concentrate themselves on one path. 80% of the colony "chose" Path A, while only 20% of the colony "chose" Path B. 

Ants exhibit this behavior because of recruiting, either by returning to the nest and stimulating other ants to follow it back to the food source or by laying a chemical trail that attracts other ants. 

If we think about our own behavior, we're not that different. While we don't follow a chemical trail of secreted pheromones, we do exhibit herding behavior and follow a trail - a trail of reputation preservation tactics and beauty contests known as "best practices." 

We love the safety and security of best practices: "it is better to be conventionally wrong than unconventionally right" (Keynes, 1936). We, as humans, suffer from cognitive biases that cause us to herd and follow the decisions (right or wrong) of a group. We see this played out time and again in history: bank runs associated with the Great Depression, football hooliganism in Europe in the 1980s, and even the behavior exhibited at some of the 2016 presidential campaign rallies.

To see herding in the context of compensation, we need to look no further than our own professional literature. Payscale's 2016 Best Practices Survey welcomes readers to a magical place called Comptopia:

In 2016, cast your compensation cares away and escape to an idyllic island known as Comptopia. In this sparkling land, your pay struggles melt away like an ice cream cone in a sizzling tropical locale. Candidates accept your first offer and don't try to use you as leverage against a competitor's offer. Hiring managers nod agreeably when you recommend a salary. Market rate is no longer a hazy mirage, but an accessible metric that appears magically at your fingertips, on command. With this insider's guide, you'll get a step-by-step map of what it takes to join the Comptopians, carefree natives whose top performing practices make every day of their lives a pay paradise. (p. 5, emphasis added)

This is an appealing trail to follow: if every day could be a pay paradise simply by following a best practices map, wouldn't you do it? But it's also a trail full of reputation preservation tactics and beauty contests. For example, one of the key findings of the survey is that "44% of respondents cited replacing traditional annual performance reviews with ongoing, real-time feedback as the hottest HR trend for 2016" (p 6).

I think we can agree that most organizations struggle, at least from time to time, with their performance appraisal system. Let's say you are assigned to "fix" your performance appraisal system. Following the "best practice" approach, you consider blowing up your performance review system. If you do, you'll be in good company - Adobe did it, IBM did it, GE did it, and even Microsoft did it. If it doesn't work, you can be "conventionally wrong," right? It IS the hottest HR trend for 2016 (i.e., the winner of a Keynesian beauty contest).

Don't get me wrong - I think the kind of information contained in "best practices" resources like Payscale's can be incredibly useful, if it's used the right way. We have to separate the hype from the results (see Gerry Ledford's 6/6 Cafe post for just such a separation as it relates to cutting edge performance management) and consider whether this really is something that could work for you.

When it comes to figuring out what will work best for your organization at this particular moment in time, there is no simple step-by-step map or one-size-fits-all solution. I urge you to think critically about whether you want to follow the best practices trail, loaded with feel-good pheromones and plenty of opportunities to be conventionally wrong, or whether you want to break ground on your own and explore off the beaten best practices trail. After all, it's the trailblazers that create revolutionary change... 

Stephanie Thomas, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Cornell University and Program Director for the Institute for Compensation Studies (ICS) at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Throughout her career, Stephanie has completed research on a variety of topics including wage determination, pay gaps and inequality, and performance-based compensation systems. She frequently provides expert commentary in media outlets such as The New York Times, CBC, and NPR, and has published papers in a variety of journals. 

Comments

[james]

Be aware of fads, consider them for their intrinsic value, sometimes they have benefits. Some people frown on fads, only because they have not thought of them first. Good post, Stephanie.

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Stephanie is right. Never found the "best" to be that most widely advertised by enterprises with direct financial interests in what they recommend; especially when their business models are based on marketing assertions that lack objective confirmation. Even modal practices (those most frequently encountered) are typically inferior to "the best" -- the positive outliers.

Consequently, firms with immense sales expense budgets but tiny (if any) research costs tend to flog their product/service as "best." Slick pitch-makers trust that many will not check past the adjectives. Comp people are supposed to be researchers who follow facts rather than rely on unsupported claims. We can do better, by investigating options and not blindly imitating others. Followership guarantees mediocrity at best.

[Maia Lucier]

Enjoyed this post. I've often cringed at the suggestion to improve a plan or program simply by following survey norms or best practices...each company is different and what makes sense for one does not always make sense for others. Company culture, industry, stage of business maturity - all these things need to be considered before adopting a change or implementing something new.