Best Practices: Prescription for Mediocrity

Best practices. What's not to love about these universally accepted, tried-and-true methods that promise efficiency and success? Well, here's a thought: What if best practices are more of a prescription for mediocrity than a pathway to excellence? Stick with me, and I'll show you why blindly following the herd might just be the biggest mistake your business makes.

The Lure of Best Practices

Best practices are like comfort food. They’re familiar, reliable, and make you feel safe. After all, if they worked for someone else, they should work for you too, right? Businesses love them because they seem to offer a roadmap to success. You see a process or strategy that's been successful for others, and it feels like you’re tapping into a secret formula - a cheat sheet for your business.

But here's the catch—when everyone follows the same playbook, best practices become the new average. Differentiation becomes nearly impossible.

The Pitfall of Conformity

Here's the hard truth: best practices can be a one-way ticket to mediocrity, a fast track to end up in a sea of sameness. You're not standing out; you're blending in. Is that where you want to position yourself in the marketplace? 

Nobody aspires to be average, and you can't lead by following everyone else. 

Innovation Over Imitation

If you want to achieve greatness, you need to innovate, not imitate. Innovation is about questioning the status quo, experimenting, and taking risks. It's about creating new practices rather than following old ones.

Christopher Lochhead, category design legend, emphasizes that true success comes from creating new categories, not competing in existing ones. When you design a new category, you set the rules. You become the reference point, and everyone else plays catch-up.

Jane McGonigal, futurist and game designer, talks about the importance of imagining different futures and preparing for them. By focusing on identifying signals of change and what could be rather than what has been, you position yourself to compete at the forefront of innovation.

Are You Thinking Wrong?

Best practices apply certain solutions to certain problems - that's "thinking right." By definition, innovation requires working with uncertain problems and solutions. That's right, you need to Think Wrong! The Think Wrong methodology helps overcome complacency and other barriers that keep you and your team from exploring, developing, and implementing bold path solutions. It encourages radical thinking, creative problem-solving, and unconventional approaches. And it will help you break away from conventional wisdom and explore uncharted territories.

By embracing the Think Wrong mindset, you open yourself up to possibilities that best practices would never allow. You start asking different questions, considering different solutions, and ultimately, finding better ways to achieve your goals.

Practical Steps to Thinking Wrong

1. Chart a Bold Path: Challenge the status quo. Regularly question existing processes and practices. Ask yourself and your team why things are done a certain way and whether there might be a better approach.
2. Bet Small: Encourage a culture of experimentation, where you make a series of small bets to address uncertainty. You don't need to risk it all to move forward. Apply what you learn and keep moving.

3. Learn Fast: Rather than ROI, focus on LFI, or Learn from Investment. Learn as much as you can as quickly as you can. As your small bets move through your innovation pipeline, you reduce risk and remove uncertainty.

4. Build your Innovation Culture: Create an environment where new ideas are welcomed by rigorous testing rather than criticism. Build a system that encourages and rewards your team for taking risks and learning new things.

Conclusion

Best practices might seem like a comfortable safety net, but they can also be a trap. To break free from mediocrity, think beyond the conventional and embrace an innovation mindset.

In the end, the companies that truly excel are those that dare to be different, that question the norms, and that create their own paths. So, start forging your own. The future belongs to the innovators, not the imitators.