Best practices can be helpful, but they are just a starting point. We have to adjust them to fit our specific situation.
Thousands of blogs, books, articles, video’s, and podcasts talk about “best practices.” They cover every topic imaginable. Every nuance of marketing, sales, customer experience, business, dating (oops) talk about best practices.
As consumers of information about how to improve, we devour best practices. The thought is, “If I know what’s best practice, and apply it in my organisation, we will be doing the very best things we can and should see huge performance improvements.”
The problem with best practices is that they are only “best” in a specific context. That is, what is best for others, may not be the best for us for a whole number of reasons. The organisations may have very different strategies and goals. The products and services offered may be very different and target different types of customers. The customers may be very different.
In reality, best practices, at best, can be only very general.
Nothing can ever address our specific situation or the context of what we face right now. Even best practices within our own companies have limitations because they cannot address every context/situation we face.
