Next Practices
Next practices is the distinction Prahalad drew throughout his career to separate organizations that adapt from organizations that optimize themselves into obsolescence. Best practices are the codification of what has worked — valuable when paradigms are stable, dangerous when paradigms are shifting because they encode the assumptions of the old paradigm into organizational behavior. Next practices are the emergent discovery of what the new paradigm demands — practices that have not yet been codified because they are being invented by the organizations experimenting their way into the new environment.
In the AI Story
Five specific misapplications of best practice are observable in AI-era organizations. First, organizing AI-augmented teams by functional specialty when the dimensional multiplier dissolves functional boundaries. The next practice organizes teams by strategic vector — small autonomous groups exploring a problem space across all functional domains. Second, measuring productivity by output volume when the bottleneck has ascended to judgment. The next practice measures judgment quality — the strategic value of problems identified, the significance of questions asked.
Third, evaluating employees by individual contribution within defined roles when AI-augmented environments reward cross-domain contribution. The next practice evaluates contribution to collective intelligence regardless of nominal role. Fourth, managing work through sequential planning when AI-augmented work is fundamentally exploratory. The next practice replaces sequential planning with guided exploration — strategic direction without prescribed path. Fifth, structuring careers as ladders within specialties when AI-augmented careers are webs spanning multiple domains. The next practice replaces ladders with capability portfolios.
Each next practice requires more people, not fewer. The strategic-vector team needs diverse perspectives. Judgment-quality metrics need experienced evaluators. Contribution-based evaluation needs colleagues who observe cross-domain work. Guided exploration needs the combinatorial richness of a full team. The capability-portfolio career needs mentors and collaborators. The headcount-reducing organization cannot develop next practices because next practices emerge from the interactions of diverse teams. Reduce the team, thin the interactions, and the organizational experimentation that produces next practices slows to a crawl.
Origin
The distinction appears across Prahalad's writing from the 1990s onward, crystallizing in his 2010 Harvard Business Review observation that management practices developed in the last century would not suffice for the challenges of the twenty-first.
Key Ideas
Codification vs emergence. Best practices are codified; next practices are still being invented.
Stable vs shifting paradigms. Best practices work in stable conditions; they harm in shifting ones.
Five specific misapplications. Functional organization, velocity metrics, role-based evaluation, sequential planning, career ladders.
More people required. Next practices emerge from diverse team interactions.
First-mover advantage compounds. Organizational learning cannot be compressed by late entrants.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- Prahalad, C. K. Best Practices Get You Only So Far (Harvard Business Review, April 2010).
- Hamel, Gary. The Future of Management (Harvard Business School Press, 2007).
- Edmondson, Amy. The Fearless Organization (Wiley, 2018).