PUTTING BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES INTO ACTION
It is often easy for people to claim they can manage, but what does management mean? Management is the art of getting things done through using people and equipment (as highlighted in chapter 3). Management entails developing appropriate strategies to help accomplish desired goals. This often entails putting best practices into action.
If a best practice already exists, it is often wiser and easier to attempt what has been done before rather than to try something that has not been attempted.
The following is a 10-step process for putting best practices into action.
1. Review current business practices and develop appropriate benchmarks both from inside a facility and from industry sources (e.g., publi- cations, associations, mentors)
2. Connect with other facility managers to study their best practices, share ideas, and help garner different opinions
3. Identify one task that needs improvement; start small, but make sure it is a visible project so that, if successful, the improvement can be promoted throughout the facility
4. Examine how the task is currently being com- pleted and determine ways in which it could possibly be improved
5. Decide who in the organization should follow the best practices (hopefully everyone)
6. Establish a team for final review and approval so that others have a say in the process
7. Decide how to implement and evaluate the change and whether there will there be flex- ibility if roadblocks are encountered and the solution needs to be tweaked
8. Ensure that the procedure chosen is acces- sible and is recorded in a way that lets others know what to do and how to do it, such as by recording everything from meetings to job interviews to the decision-making process as a training aid for employees
9. Verify the success of the best practices using numbers such as cost reductions or increased efficiency to provide a tangible measurement
10. Start all over again with a new task (Garris, 2006)