Best-of-Breed

A beguiling idea

Here is a pleasingly intuitive thought for you.  To improve business performance…

1. Work out what the component parts of your organisation are
2. Find the best-of-breed for each component
3. Replace what you have with the best-of-breed

If you have the best-of-breed components then you can’t be beaten.  You will have created a world-class organisation.  This idea is so obviously right it is widely practiced within:

• I.T. — best systems
• H.R. — best people
• Purchasing — best suppliers
• Operations — best equipment

No matter what field you are in, there will be a best-of-breed, just waiting to be exploited.

An example

There are two types of keyboard you can buy for your computer.  A standard QWERTY keyboard or a Dvorak keyboard.

The best-of-breed is the Dvorak keyboard.  Dr. August Dvorak designed it in 1932 after carrying out a set of time and motion studies on typists.  It is overwhelmingly better than the QWERTY keyboard.  Let me explain why…

In an ideal world a typist wouldn’t have to move his fingers from row to row.  The Dvorak keyboard was designed so that (for somebody typing English) 70% of the keystrokes are on the “home” or middle row.  28% are on the top row and 8% on the bottom row. For QWERTY typists only 32% of keystrokes are on the home row.

The population is predominately right-handed.  Using a QWERTY keyboard the typist’s left hand completes 56% of key strokes.  The Dvorak keyboard reverses this and places 56% of key strokes on the stronger right hand.

If a typist can use both hands alternately then typing becomes faster, as one hand hits a key the other hand can find the next so improving rhythm and speed.  On the Dvorak keyboard all the vowels (and the Y) are on the left hand side of the keyboard, promoting a hand to hand rhythm.

Here, in all its glory is the Dvorak keyboard:

Best-of-breed performance

It has been estimated that during a typical 8-hour day a typist’s fingers travel sixteen miles over a QWERTY keyboard.  On the innovative Dvorak keyboard that distance plummets by a staggering 94% to just one single mile.

That is a startling improvement in performance, even before you consider the impact of lost time and medical claims for repetitive strain injury.

Combining breeds

Of course, the ideal pairing with a best-of-breed keyboard is a best-of-breed typist.  To avoid any Benny Hill humour, let’s agree that a best-of-breed typist looks like somebody who can average about seventy words per minute.  To put that in context I manage about thirty-five.

What happens when you combine a best-of-breed typist with a best-of-breed keyboard? You get a dismal performance as the QWERTY trained touch typist hunts about with two fingers for the keys…

A fool’s errand

The components aren’t important, it is the interaction between them that counts.

• You might have the best technicians and the best equipment, but if those technicians haven’t been trained to use the equipment you just end up with frustrated technicians
• You might have the best systems and the best infrastructure, but if the infrastructure doesn’t support the systems you just end up with a lot of error messages
• You might have the best sales man and the best ops guy, but if they don’t talk to each other…

A better strategy

Is to be clear on the overall purpose of your organisation, then make sure that all the component parts, systems, people, suppliers, departments and processes are working together to that aim.

Integration and cooperation are far more powerful levers than individual performance.

If you combine the best-of-breeds, you may well end up with a mongrel.

If you enjoyed this post click here to receive the next

Read another opinion

Image by Jon Pinder