Let’s Agree: Don’t Call Copying What Other People Do “Best Practices”

Some things in the board­room dri­ve me crazy. (Actu­al­ly the list is quite long, but we don’t need to get into that today). Near the top of that list is the term ​“best practices”.

What is ​“best” depends on many, many fac­tors. So, when peo­ple say, ​“best prac­tices”, they real­ly mean ​“com­mon practices.”

And, while com­mon prac­tices can be won­der­ful, I believe they can also very, very dangerous.

The prob­lem with using common/​best practices:

I’m all for opti­miz­ing and improv­ing but you need to do that with eyes wide open. You must make sure any sys­tems you imple­ment are best for you and the nuances of your busi­ness, based on your strat­e­gy and unique view of, or approach to, tak­ing care of your cus­tomers. If you don’t…

• You often become much like the oth­er busi­ness­es you com­pete with, as you try to opti­mize or streamline.
• The more you oper­ate and think like your com­pe­ti­tion, the more like­ly you are to inad­ver­tent­ly put your­self into a com­modi­tized position.

When in the eyes of your cus­tomers you and your com­pe­ti­tion are very sim­i­lar, the only way to decide between you is based on price.

A best prac­tice for some­body else could actu­al­ly be a worst prac­tice for you.

For exam­ple, we just did a full review of HR process­es for a com­pa­ny, includ­ing many of the things they had imple­ment­ed from a cor­po­rate behe­moth with thou­sands of employ­ees, that didn’t work for their entre­pre­neur­ial com­pa­ny of a few hun­dred peo­ple. The result were cum­ber­some, slow and bureau­crat­ic sys­tems that were actu­al­ly ​“worst prac­tices” for them.

To be clear, I’m not say­ing don’t look at ​“best” or ​“com­mon prac­tices”, I’m say­ing choose an ​“advan­tage-enhanc­ing” prac­tice for your busi­ness strat­e­gy – one that gives you a com­pet­i­tive edge.

The Chal­lenge

• Don’t assume that all ​“best prac­tices” are a good idea.
• Look at ​“com­mon prac­tices” and then choose what will be an ​“advan­tage- enhanc­ing prac­tices” for you.
• If you don’t know, then you might need to reach out to oth­er lead­ers who may have a sim­i­lar strategy.

Want more?

Lis­ten: Episode 102 of The Growth Whis­per­ers pod­cast.

Read:

Ignore Con­ven­tion­al Wisdom

Brand Authen­tic­i­ty and Consistency

Grow­ing a Busi­ness vs Busi­ness Administration

Deliv­er­ing Cus­tomer Delight

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