Property Best Practice vs Better Practice

Why does Grosvenor always carry on about “no cookie cutter solutions”?

Why do we always talk about “Better Practice” rather than “Best Practice”?

There’s a really simple reason. When people talk about best practice, they’re suggesting that there is always a solution you can take off the shelf and apply. That ‘Industry Gold Standard’ that if replicated, will give me the best possible outcomes for my organisation.

A lot of people talk about this being the ‘copy and paste’ approach, but we prefer to think about it being more like ‘find and replace’. We all know the dangers of a global find and replace in a document. Often it results, at best, in contextual changes to the document, but at worst the document is riddled with issues and/or no longer makes any sense.

Your property portfolio is the same. Whether it’s your operating model, your accommodation strategy, or your outsourcing approach, that simple find and replace methodology probably isn’t going to cut it.

So what do we mean by “Better Practice”?

When we talk about “Better Practice”, we mean understanding your organisation first, including:

• objectives
• operating environment
• culture
• ways of working

This means not only understanding where your organisation has been, but also where you want to go

> using our knowledge across the different industries and sectors, emerging trends and proven approaches, and applying it to your specific context

> looking at potential solutions that are specifically relevant to your organisation, and evaluating how they would be applied to your organisation in order to get the best possible results for you.

In doing this, we’re able to identify potential risks and opportunities down the road, and fully appreciate how they may affect your organisation for the better or worse. Sometimes there is an existing approach that can be amended to provide a quality solution, but by doing the ‘quality thinking’ we can then design an approach which represents “Best Practice” for your organisation’s context and environment.

So, when you find that “Best Practice” or “Industry Gold Standard” and you’re wondering whether to replace your ways of working, your service scope, or your operating model, do yourself a favour and think deeper. Think about who you are as an organisation and where you want to go, and what affect those solutions might have.

Your cookie may end up looking a little different to all of those around you, but it will taste so much sweeter!