The difference between best practice and standard practice

I saw an article today - just one in a long line - making reference to best practice in CSR reporting. I'm not going to single it out - it wasn't worse or different to others of the genre.

Before you take such pieces and their lessons to heart, you should ask yourself whether they are genuinely describing "best practice" or just "current practice".

In my view, Best Practice must surely be able to demonstrate a superior outcome achieved because of the way the thing has been done.

Equally, Best Practice is quite rare. That's why it's 'Best Practice' not 'Quite Good Practice' or 'Bog Standard Practice'.

Outcomes in reporting are achieved in the success the communication has with its intended audience. A communication without impact on an audience is a vanity brochure, not a communication.

Rather a lot of the lectures on Best Practice cite examples which cannot be proven one way or the other as such - because the crucial additional element of how well they connected with their audience is missing - as though this was irrelevant to the exercise.

Such pieces will do things like generalise about what 'stakeholders want'. "Stakeholders increasingly demand x" without any kind of tighter definition as to which stakeholders, nor proof that x is genuinely what they want at all.

Beware people who define Best Practice as something that follows a framework, such as GRI. Whether such frameworks are helpful or not, they are designed to set a baseline. Using such frameworks INSTEAD of thinking through how your effectively communicate with your audience is, in my mind, BAD practice - although the frameworks can be a useful resource to draw from if done well.

Best Practice generally hinges on superior skill in execution. It may also include a high quality of insight, an unorthodox use of techniques previously little used for that purpose, or simply taking the tools available and doing something that bit special with them that lifts the result from standard to sublime.

Just think about it in a different context - the other communications you get from companies.

What's the most memorable TV ad you ever saw? Do you imagine that the fact it followed the advertising standards of the time is what made it memorable?