The Best Practices Trap
“If it works, it’s true.”
— Lee Thayer — Author, Harvard Professor, pioneer in the design and development of high-performance organizations
There was a popular book in the 1980’s, In Search of Excellence, that essentially proclaimed that by adopting “best practices” from successful companies, your organization would reach their level of excellence as well. However, no more than two years later, many of the companies profiled proved to be anything but excellent.
In 2009, The Economist featured an article about the dangers of being a management guru with a sunny outlook. In it they reported how one of the authors of the book was almost apologetic in his new book on corporate failure, saying now, “Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.”
Best practices are essentially one size fits all solutions that do not take into account your unique context. Copying and pasting best practices will make you more like your competition, rather than differentiating you from them.
“But Apple did it…” is not proper justification for decisions and actions. Apple is a unicorn with gigantic cash reserves. They can afford to wait until they develop “perfect” products. Would this be an expense you could afford to incur until you began to generate revenue? It can be tempting to take the easy route and copy another company’s strategy or even your competitor. I strongly caution you against this. Just because something appears to have worked or it has always been done does not mean that that is the best solution for your company. Organizations that are truly innovative are ones that constantly question and challenge the status quo.
Consider the difference between retailers, such as Zappos. They were able to differentiate from the masses by throwing away the best practices playbook. They ran small experiments and learned quickly. They then scaled their internally developed practices exceptionally well and managed to reach $1Bn in sales. Ironically, they now sell their methods as best practices, called Zappos Insights.
Generally best practices are widely available either publicly or via consultants and can be immediately applied in the workplace. Arguably, this is one of the worst things about them. Being available everywhere most likely means they are also being used by everyone. Closely following common practices can make it extremely difficult for a business to be innovative and differentiate themselves from the competition. Rather than adopting best practices, create the habit of identifying promising ideas. Use them as inspiration to experiment in your own unique context. Fail fast and safe while identifying what works best for you in the process.
Before taking a job as CEO of an Advanced Materials company I was the CEO of a software company. During my tenure at this company I learned and practiced Agile Software in its original form, SCRUM, a project management system that relies on incremental development. SCRUM worked exceptionally well in software. So, I decided to apply it to my new position in hardware, expecting the same degree of success.
Approximately six months into SCRUM-ing in two week sprints we faced a crisis in R&D. We were two months behind on critical product, and to the dissatisfaction of our investors were burning through cash we had not budgeted for. Using SCRUM and agile project management software we were planning two weeks ahead. After holding a deep retrospective, we realized that the two week intervals were way too long for troubleshooting the problems that would arise. Each day provided critical information that needed to be incorporated into experiments the following day. We decided to move to a 24h planning cycle, using only a whiteboard.
Each morning would start discussing the lessons learned from yesterday’s experiments and then create an action plan for the day. At 1pm we would check in to see if we were on track for the day. Then meeting again at 4pm to prepare what would be needed for overnight testing. In two months the project was back on track and the R&D results were more predictable and consistent. Once this was achieved, we realized that the 24h cycle was too aggressive. So we adjusted to a one week planning and execution schedule using the software tool again. However, interestingly we continue to use the whiteboard as a daily coordination tool.
This is what worked for our R&D department. The Sales and Marketing team kept doing two week SCRUM sprints as that was what worked well for them. By experimenting with an idea, modifying it for the conditions at hand, while continuously questioning the status quo we were able to take a best practice, such as SCRUM and leverage what worked well to remain innovative.
Eric Kish as an author, speaker and practicing CEO. He is the author of 5 to 50 to 500: How to build and run scalable organizations and Everyday Turnaround: The art and science of daily business transformation
