Why current thinking fails
If you’ve been in business for a few years, you’ll have seen how best practice can cycle between opposite approaches. Examples include “we must follow accredited industry standards” versus “we must run projects creatively as Agile”, or “we must outsource” versus “we must axe contractors and move work in-house”. Then there’s centralised versus local technology, or management, or distribution. Even space is on the merry-go-round: open plan versus cellular, and — once again due to covid-19 — office versus home working.
Do these sound familiar? Perhaps you can come up with a few examples of your own. But should you question best practice or do yet another re-org? It takes time to come up with a custom approach so why not just save time by accepting industry wisdom?
There’s a reason why extremes became popular — they represent a clearer break from something else. Innovation often begins with a counter-idea to the mainstream that is resisted by many. If the idea works then it gains traction and becomes mainstream itself. The good points of what came before can be overlooked in the rush for the new extreme. The middle road may borrow brilliantly from the best of the extremes, but it lacks selling power of oppositeness. We see this in politics as the left-wing and right-wing parties alternately capture the imagination of the public.
New ideas are usually worth looking into. But if we’re not paying attention they turn into mantras. Repeat a mantra often enough and industry ends up following it without thinking.
Here’s a more detailed example. The arguments for replacing custom software with industry-standard out-of-the-box solutions are clear: standardised support, training, recognised capabilities, processes aligned with best-practises — the list goes on. There are disadvantages too, but today the broad industry consensus is that you follow this principle. If you don’t then you’re not yet a “mature” organisation. Now imagine you’re an octopus, going into a clothes shop looking for a jacket? Do you buy the off-the-shelf offering with its two arms? Can we not think of some occasions when commissioning a bespoke jacket might turn out to be beneficial?
What goes wrong if we follow principles unquestioningly? It turns out that, if you really need to, you can customise out-of-box solutions later on. But it’s expensive, invalidates standardised support, confuses training, and creates headaches during upgrades. You can end up with the worst of both worlds, and people often do. Most of our clients benefit from some standard solutions mixed in with custom components but only if this is planned at the outset so the pathways are free of technical road blocks and unforeseen costs.
Knowledge of accepted industry wisdom is great, but it’s not a substitute for clear thinking. If you hire consultants for advice and direction, then check that they’re thinking clearly too. At Six Trends we promise to listen, and we promise to think clearly about what’s being discussed.
