quired enrollment in lengthy psychological therapy, but eventually made full recoveries. Indeed, one is said to have developed superb basket-weaving skills while at the institution and another is still unable to make leſt turns. But what the hell… no plan is perfect! One Bite at a Time Like so many other endeavors in your business, as Joey Two Tons from Jersey City (Tony Soprano’s cousin) said, “The journey of 1,000 miles begins with one freakin’ step.” Incidentally, some claim it was actually the Chinese philosopher Loa Tzu who said it, but you will appreciate that nobody wants to be the one to correct Joey and risk “sleeping with the fishes!” So, it may be best to just forgetaboutit. Incidentally, if you’ve never been to metropolitan New Jersey, remember that the proper etiquette when meeting someone is “Howw you duu in?” The polite colloquial response is “Howw YOUU duu in? As is hopefully evident by now, having earned business degrees from two New Jersey universities — along with experience negotiating labor agreements with the NJ Teamsters and dealing with NJ longshoremen crews — I am a qualified interpreter, in case you need such services. Irrespective of the source, why not apply Joey’s wisdom to developing best practices for your business? With word pro- cessing soſtware and video camera tools, we can construct a library and build upon it. Let’s begin applying these principles. Alternatives to Consider The importance of buy-in notwithstanding, you may want to consider developing some draſt best practices (BP) to jump-start your initiative. One approach is to release a draſt BP document to the team and ask them to refine it. Start with something easy, such as how to answer the phone, which is one of the formatted examples you will find later in this article. The idea is to remove any anxiety that may exist among team members. Sometimes, when we are confronted with something unfamiliar, we prefer not to risk looking like we don’t know what is appropriate, be- cause we lack direct experience. Seeing one or two specimens (relax, nothing to do with DIY colon screening kits) can place team members at ease by removing the mystery. You could elect to present a BP document that has some por- tions blank or incomplete so team members can complete it. You might even present several variations of verbiage and ask the team to select the preferred alternative, similar to multiple- choice test. Do whatever works best to engage the team and get moving. It’s usually best not to ask team members to write BPs or present their ideas standing in front of a group. Avoid im- mediately shooting down ideas or suggestions, especially in the WWW.ALOA.ORG “When you are ready to get serious about developing your best practices, remember that you can either ram this best practices stuff down your employees’ throats or engage them in the process.” beginning. Let team members feel empowered and, if necessary, ask the team to stack rank the suggestions. If you’re not familiar with the term “stack rank,” it just means assigning some sort of alpha or numeric ranking or expression of desirability, such as A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the best, etc. To finalize the process, like a veteran sheep dog (yes, of course you can be the alpha, as long as you don’t try to mark your ter- ritory around the office), guide the discussion by consolidating suggestions and offering refined verbiage that all participants can embrace as theirs. Remember, you can modify — and hope- fully improve upon — these first-pass BP editions later on. Get the team enthusiastically engaging in the process and seeing how this makes sense, and then they will be ready to tackle the more complicated and difficult BPs later. Don’t seek perfection, especially in the embryonic stages! Next, let’s take a look at how to structure our best practices. Structure and Format Although there isn’t any particular structure required for your best practices, they will be easier to develop and look more pro- fessional if you employ a logical format. Think about what we need and the questions we seek to answer. Topic - What does this BP pertain to? Effective Date - Self explanatory Purpose - What are we trying to accomplish? Application - Under what circumstances will this apply? Process - What are the sequential steps to be taken? Let’s use the simple phone-answering example we discussed earlier. MARCH 2021 KEYNOTES 27
