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Best practices: The road to mediocrity
Best practices are the guideposts we cite to compare our successes. But, best practices elevate “me too” strategies to dangerous levels, trading differentiation for strength in similarity. There is, however, no strength in similarity where competition is concerned.
We learn by imitation - math, language, etiquette, etc. Imitation is a form of cooperative behavior which is respected from the sandbox to the boardroom. Innovative thinking, outside the sandbox thinking, throws sand in the face of prevailing assumptions. It breaks rules. It contradicts best practices.
Through dependency on best practices, organizations minimize risk, hoping to achieve similar results. While this cushions short term risk, it also creates a long term consequence – a lack of differentiation. Parity guarantees mediocrity.
Authors W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, in their book Blue Ocean Strategy, define differentiation as the ultimate objective. The role of innovation is to create a significant distance between your organization and those who compete with you.
Innovation creates risk. But that is balanced by a potentially huge upside – uncontested market space and the possibility of making the competition irrelevant. Identifying trends and creating strategies to exploit opportunities changes the rules of the game. That’s innovative thinking.
I have taught several courses throughout my career. In every instance, one of my first discussions is on “rules.” It’s important to know the rules in order to understand which should be broken, and when. Creativity and innovation are not about following rules, but reframing the question to create new rules. That is how innovators break away from the business as usual. When they succeed, new best practices are established.
Every day, organizations invest billions of dollars on the wisdom of inertia. As long as no one else creates a breakthrough, it’s a safe bet – a red ocean bet, as Chan and Mauborgne would define it.
Terry Jones, former CEO of Travelocity, in a keynote address at The Front End of Innovation conference last week, said “The best way to avoid being marginalized is to create your own margins.”
Best practices are best for those who invent them. As followers imitate the success, the innovation is commoditized. Price wars ensue. Profits decline. And the challenge for new differentiation is taken on by a fresh innovator who creates another blue ocean of uncontested market space.
Chas Martin
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Reader Comments (4)
Innovation can be painful and injurious to the whole organization. Innovation is not for everyone.
Although adopting some form of industry standards or best practices is useful, there is no replacement for thoroughly understanding your own business and using the brains that God gave you to make a plan which is suitable and efficient. "Best Practices" should be part of your toolbox and not a destination or goal.
You don't have to look far to find disasters which were the inevitable result of blindly following what has been done by others.
In the desert, we never drove on top of someone else's tracks; we did not want to land on top of the guy in front who went over a slipface.