Evidence-Based Practice: Five Steps to Improving Decisions in Your Organization
What is evidence-based practice and why does it matter in organizations?
Evidence-based practice (EBP) refers to the process of using scientific knowledge to make decisions and drive effective action. Practitioners have access to a great deal of information they can rely on to make decisions (e.g., past experiences, advice from others, research studies). Of course, some of this information is more valuable for making the right decisions and achieving the best outcomes. Practitioners must be able to discern which information is trustworthy and credible and which information is not. To attain the best outcomes, practitioners need to identify and use information from highly credible sources that are grounded in research and scientific inquiry.
People regularly forget, misremember, and apply their personal biases to vital information, making personal judgement an ineffective and potentially problematic basis for decision making.
It might seem apparent that practitioners ought to use the best, most credible information they have when making decisions. Indeed, thousands of scholarly management articles are published each year revealing which practices are the most effective and will yield the best outcomes. Despite this, management practitioners rarely ground their decisions in them and instead rely on their own personal judgment, preferences, and past experiences. However, human judgment is extremely susceptible to error and bias. People regularly forget, misremember, and apply their personal biases to vital information, making personal judgment an ineffective and potentially problematic basis for decision making. Consequently, organizations unnecessarily spend billions of dollars each year on management practices that are ineffective or even harmful to their reputations, bottom lines, members, and customers. EBP is about pushing practitioners to make decisions according to what has been scientifically proven to work.
How can organizations use EBP to improve decision making?
For an organization to thrive, its leaders must make effective decisions regarding its people and programs. To guide these decisions, leaders have access to a seemingly endless amount of information. For example, they could rely on their knowledge of what other organizations are doing, management blogs, pop management books, or scholarly research articles, all of which vary widely in their trustworthiness for guiding good decisions. Despite this, leaders often fail to fully assess the quality and credibility of information they are using and instead, rely on their personal judgement. For example, organizational decision makers often take the management practices of other organizations as evidence of what works. They attempt to emulate these practices without determining if they are truly effective. Or, they may make decisions based on what they have done in the past without critically evaluating it for efficacy. Bottom line -- the best available evidence is often not considered, leading to ineffective decisions, poor outcomes, and little understanding of what went wrong.
So, how can organizations use EBP to improve the decisions they make regarding their people and their programs? I will explain with a 5-step approach and provide an example at each step.
Define and articulate the problem, issue, or question
All EBP approaches start with a problem that needs to be solved or a decision that needs to be made. Thus, the first step in EBP is to gain a full understanding of the issue at hand. Decision makers should gather internal qualitative and quantitative data about the problem so they can clearly define it within the organizational context. The problem should be examined from multiple angles by discussing it with stakeholders and examining existing internal data.
It is essential that decision makers clearly define and articulate a problem statement as it will guide each of the following steps. Problem statements should include information about the population concerned and the outcomes of interest. Decisions makers may find it useful to frame the problem in terms of a question that starts with the phrase, “How do I?” or “How do we?” to guide their information search. EXAMPLE: How can we train our newly hired sales people so they have the knowledge they need to sell our products?
Gather and evaluate the best available evidence
Central to EBP is the critical evaluation of information to determine what is the “best available.” Key to finding the best available evidence is searching in the right places. You can gain access to research studies by searching Google Scholar, searching academic research databases such as EBSCO or Lexis Nexis, or even checking out academic journals at a university library. White papers can also provide evidence-based information. After you have gathered the best available evidence, integrate it to determine the main findings. EXAMPLE: Search sources such as Google Scholar and EBSCO using terms such as, “sales training,” “adult learning,” and “drivers of sales performance” to gather evidence-based information. Then, assess it for credibility and summarize your findings.
Integrate the best possible evidence with stakeholder feedback
Once the best available evidence has been identified it must be considered in terms of the organizational context. That is, how will this evidence-based approach work in this organization? To do this, decision makers should work with organizational stakeholders (i.e., those who will be affected by the change) to gather their feedback and perspectives on how the new process can be best implemented. This feedback will also help decision makers assess the risks and benefits of the change. EXAMPLE: Reach out to stakeholders (e.g., sales leadership, training team) to review the problem, your research, and recommended action. Ask for their feedback about how the new process might be implemented in your organization specifically.
Design the change and implement it
Next, using the best available evidence and stakeholder input, practitioners can make decisions about what changes should be made and the best way to implement them. During this stage, practitioners develop a plan by determining processes, resources, and plans for change management. Then, they implement according to the plan. EXAMPLE: Design and implement a sales training on product knowledge to a targeted group that combines evidence and stakeholder input.
Evaluate the change
Finally, even though evidence-based programs theoretically should lead to the desired outcomes, it’s important to make sure. Thus, the final step in EBP is evaluation. In this step, decision makers assess the new practice to determine whether it solved the problem and led to the desired outcomes. Unfortunately, all too often, this step is skipped entirely and practitioners simply presume the change was effective. It is important to note that evaluation should be completed alongside the implementation. Basic evaluations typically require that data be collected both before and after the change. Then, decision makers can compare the two time points to determine if improvements were made. In addition, evaluations should be similar in scale to the change investment itself. Large investments should be assessed thoroughly to determine whether they had their intended impact. On the other hand, if a change is relatively small, it probably doesn’t require a large evaluation. EXAMPLE: Collect trainee data on your sales outcomes of interest (e.g., product knowledge, sales revenue) before and after the training and analyze it to determine if improvements were made. Use the results to inform training program improvements.
Final Thoughts
Thousands of scholarly management articles are published each year aimed at informing and improving organizational decision making. However, the vast majority of practitioners fail to use this information to drive their decisions, typically resulting in less than optimal outcomes. EBP (and Category One Consulting!) urge management practitioners to utilize the best, most credible evidence they have available to guide their decisions and achieve the best possible outcomes. If you have questions, feel free to reach out!