Organizational performance is unique. Cut and paste does not work. You need to find your own formula. Good to hear about how Google does, and how Apple does, but you are not a mini Google or mini Apple.
Steal ideas, copy mechanisms, reflect on tricks, talk to your teams a lot about ‘what if we did it like they do?” But this is as far as it goes. You need to find your magic, your combinations, your fit for purpose recipes, what will work and won’t in your culture.
The life cycle of a Best Practice is a week. Don’t bank on them. Business models are usually not transferable. Ideas are. Organizations are not IKEA tables coming in flat pack. It’s more cooking those ready meals in the microwave.
There are heuristics that are worth considering though. For example, there are lots of reasons why decision making at the lowest possible level is more efficient. Or that command and control leadership is in itself self-limiting nor efficient. These are the kind of ideas that you need to steal and reconfigure for yourself, translate, decide the formula. But the formula is yours, it is unique.
In many geographically dispersed NGOs, formal management won’t see the staff for months. And they are successful. Find out their formula, expose yourself to the what if, learn, translate. But that does not make you a field based NGO, nor some of their leadership practices appropriate.
Open the windows, open your eyes, steal, recap, abandon, make your own.
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