E18: Best Practices are Stupid

What if best practices are stupid? Welcome to Invisible Solutions. I'm your host, Steven Shapiro. Each week we tackle your most complex problems using the lenses from my book, Invisible Solutions. If you need the lenses, go to getthelenses.com with that. Let's get started with today's episode. Those of you who have followed my work know that about 10 years ago I wrote a book called Best Practices are Stupid. Today I want to address why we shouldn't always look for best practices to be the answers to your questions, the solutions to your problems. So if we're going to do better problem solving, it would be useful to have an understanding of how best practices fit into finding better solutions. So there are three primary reasons why I feel that best practices are stupid. One is that replication is not innovation. The second one is context matters. And the third one is the under sampling of failure. And that last one is the one which I find most interesting. We're going to spend a little extra time on that because I think that is what intrigues me the most. The first one is replication is not innovation. If you are trying to differentiate your organization, if you're trying to be better than someone else and you are using a best practice, well, you're actually playing a game of catch up. You're trying to catch up to someone. And the reality is, by the time you implement their best practice, they're on to the next practice. So we're always playing sort of this game of catch up. Now, I want to be clear. I do believe that there are times when best practices are very useful. And if you go Back to episode 11 of this podcast where we did a deep dive into differentiation, I talked about the innovation targeting matrix. And in that we explored support activities, core activities, and differentiating activities. Support activities do not create customer value, they create organizational value. So they're internally focused, such as payroll. Core activities are those which create value for customers, but they're not your differentiator. They're the table stakes. It's not the reason why someone will do business with you, but if you get it wrong, it's why they will leave you. So it's about certain levels of quality and expectations that customers have. And then the differentiators are the reason why people do business with you, not someone else. So using a best practice for a differentiator means you're actually not able to differentiate it, because by definition, if you're copying somebody, you're not differentiating yourself. So that one's pretty straightforward. The second one is context matters. We act as though we can take a practice from one organization and bring it to another organization. There's a one size fits all strategy for practices. We've got this universal library of, of practices that I pick from here and I implement there. But culture matters. Your resources matter, your competitive position matters. Everyone wants to be Amazon or Apple, but let's face it, you aren't Amazon, you aren't Apple. You don't have the financial resources that they do. You don't have the market share that they have. You don't have the finances that they have. So trying to get a best practice from an organization like that makes absolutely no sense for most companies, because they aren't those companies. But context matters, culture matters. It's not just about size and reach, it is about other factors. And one of the examples that I like to use with this is 3M's 15% rule. And I've done a fair amount of work over the years for 3M. And they are a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant organization. Some of the products that they develop are just groundbreaking. And what I love about 3M is that, yes, they are experts in particular products, but one of their biggest strengths is being able to cross pollinate across different business units. So in other words, they might have a product from adhesives that has reflective properties, that's used in the automotive industry. And it's that intersection of industries and areas of expertise and bringing those together where they've really found the sweet spot. One of the other things that 3M is known for is their 15% rule. And their 15% rule, in a nutshell, says that people can spend 15% of their time working on whatever they want to work on. And this works great for 3M. The reason for it is they've been doing it for decades. It's much more than just allocating 15% of your time to whatever you feel like doing. The culture of 3M supports this. And 3M encourages people to work across different business lines, product lines, and bring things together and to get support from others. And so it really does work because they've created this culture over decades where people really, truly, as part of the DNA, understand what the 15% rule means. It's much more than just spending 15% of your time on whatever you want to do. And so when I see companies that decide that they want to implement a 15% rule for their organization, what they end up doing is wasting 15% of their time. It doesn't work unless you actually have the context, the culture, the deep understanding and, and the measurement and leadership and management to Support it. So that's the second one. Context matters. So we've talked about why replication is not innovation. We talked about context. The last one that I want to talk about is the under sampling of failure. And this is my favorite one because it opens up a whole can of worms. The under sampling of failure basically means that we. We tend to focus on the winners, the successes. The cousin to under sampling of failure is survivor bias. And what ends up happening is the companies that were successful implementing a particular best practice are at conferences talking about their best practices. They write books about their best practices. But what about the hundreds or thousands of companies that did exactly the same practice and they failed? Well, we don't hear about them. They're not being invited to speak at conferences. They're not being asked by publishers to do a book. So the under sampling of failure says that we tend to focus on success rather than failure. So we focus on the ones that did well. But we don't really spend any time to understand all the people who tried that practice and weren't successful. And, and this drives me crazy sometimes because I go to a lot of conferences, either as a speaker or as an attendee, and I hear a lot of people get up there and they will say, I did this, and if you did this, it will work for you. And in some cases that may be true, but I really think that probably about 70 to 80% of the time that's not true. I remember this is going back many years ago, probably like 12, 13, 14, 15 years ago, I attended a book marketing conference, and the author who sold many millions and millions and millions of books, and his promise was to share the steps and tools that made him successful so that others could replicate and reap the same rewards. Now, I know that over the years, thousands, literally thousands of people have tried his formula. And as far as I can tell, no one has come even close to his level of success. Because we know that there aren't too many authors who've achieved the number of sales that this individual had. And I'm not implying that these experts are being misleading or they're being malicious. I think it really just lies in our inability to find the correct correlation and the cause and effect because there are so many hidden factors at play. Many of them we might not have ever considered, which is why we want to avoid listening to anecdotal evidence to support conclusions. I mean, a lot of people say, hey, it worked for me and a few of my buddies, so it should work for you. And, well, this really isn't sound logic. In fact, I've seen so many successful people get up there and say, I'm going to give you the blueprint for success, and you're going to follow my blueprint, and you will be successful. And I know that literally thousands of people tried their blueprint and failed. So maybe there was something else. Maybe it wasn't that particular practice that made them successful, but maybe there was something else. Maybe it was about timing, or maybe there's one connection that they made. Maybe there was luck. So we need to really be skeptical anytime someone says, this practice was why I was successful. And this leads me to something which is sort of a passion of mine, I guess you could call it, is understanding the difference between causation, correlation, and coincidence. So causation says, I do this and I get this. I do A, I get B. A was the cause of getting B. Correlation says they're related. But maybe A didn't cause B, maybe B caused A. And then coincidence says, I did this, I did A, I got B. But guess what? It was just totally random and there was no correlation or causation at all. Understanding the distinction between causation, correlation, and coincidence is really critical for innovation. Because if you're going to start applying solutions, you better understand that the work that you're doing, the money you're spending, the investments you are making, are actually going to cause the success you want. Now, for certain sets of processes and activities, there might be things that we can do that would make us more efficient. Again, as I said before, there are times when best practices are very helpful. Right now, I'm investing in a customer relationship management system, and I know there's a lot of really good practices for using those tools, and I'm going to be implementing those practices. But also, as I do that, I'm always thinking about my business. What is it that I want from my business? What are my goals? What are my objectives? And they're different than other people who use the same software. Therefore, it's critical for me to understand my unique objectives when it comes to causation versus correlation. Just one example, and I think I talked about this in an earlier podcast. I found this to be really fascinating. There was this study that claimed that individuals with greater wealth are happier. Individuals with greater wealth are happier. So let's assume for a moment that that statement is true. And what that implies is that there's a correlation between wealth and happiness. Wealth and happiness are related. However, when you read this report, a lot of people will immediately jump to the conclusion that Money makes people happy. Money makes people happy. And what that implies is that money is the cause of happiness. If we get money, we become happy. But if you dig into the study and go a lot deeper, what you're going to find is the exact opposite is true. Money did not cause happiness. Happiness caused wealth. Because what they found was that happy people attracted more wealth into their life because the happier you were, the more you were eager to work, and more people were eager to work with you. And so the causation is happiness causing wealth. But if you get it wrong, people are chasing wealth and the beliefs they'll be happy, and they're never happy. Okay, so what does all of this have to do with problem solving? This is a podcast on problem solving, so let's. Let's bring it back to that. Well, problem solving is all around finding solutions. And in a lot of cases, when we figure out what the problem is, we start looking to others to find the solution, and we might look to a best practice. So the point is, when looking for solutions, first of all, make sure you have the right question, which is the basis of invisible solutions, and it's the basis of this podcast. But when you have the right question, don't immediately jump to a solution someone else has. Because when we look for solutions, the easy answer is to copy what someone else did. But really, you want to be skeptical. Did it really work for them? Was it truly the cause of their success? Is it something that can be replicated? And if it did work for them, would it work for you? Would it work in your environment? What your needs are, what your wants are, what your culture is for your organization? You need to make sure it fits. And if it would work for you, the question is maybe, is it too late? Is it too late? Because, let's face it, by the time that somebody's already implemented a best practice, they got the success from it. They're on a stage sharing about it or writing about it in a book. Well, it's probably been out there for so long that it is no longer a best practice. The world has moved on since then, and maybe it's no longer relevant. So the key is to reframe the problem and find better questions first before finding better solutions. And then once you find a better solution, well, then you need to ask yourself, does this fit? Now, I want to bring this back to invisible solutions just for a second. And I want to talk about the analogy lens. The analogy lens is number six. I love the analogy lens. I use it all the time. And the analogy lens is asking, who else has solved a similar problem? So you would probably say that, okay, well, that sounds like a best practice if I'm saying who else has solved this problem? But the analogy lens is actually a very specific way of searching for a best practice. Instead of asking who else has solved for it in your industry, the analogy lens says, who else has solved a similar problem potentially in a different industry? And that, to me is the key if we're going to start connecting the dots and finding better solutions and breaking breakthrough solutions and something that's going to differentiate us, replicating people who are our competitors, replicating people from our industry doesn't help us stand out. It just means that we're on a treadmill running faster and trying to catch up. But if we take an idea from a completely different industry or a different area of expertise, well, now we're able to at least look at that through a different lens and say, how could this help me solve a problem in a different way? And the key with any best practice, whether it is a traditional best practice where you're copying what somebody in your industry does, or an analogy based best practice where you're looking outside your industry to what somebody has done elsewhere, the key is don't adopt, adapt. Don't adopt, adapt. Make sure you understand the context, make sure you understand why it worked for them, and be sure that it's going to work for you. And when you do implement a solution that you've borrowed from someone else. I remember one company would call it steal with pride. Borrow from someone else. Make sure that it is actually appropriate for your organization, your goals, your culture, the problems that you really want to focus on. Because when you do that, best practices aren't always stupid, but we might need to adapt them rather than adopt them. And so on this episode, we really focused on the three reasons why best practices are stupid. The first one is replication is not innovation. If you're trying to differentiate yourself with a complex copied practice, that's not going to work. The second reason is context matters. We need to understand the environment in which the practice was originally used and make sure it fits our culture, our goals, our needs. And then finally, we talked about the under sampling of failure and its cousin survivor bias, and why we need to understand causation, correlation and coincidence. And with that, we are at the end of this week's episode. To submit a problem you want solved in this podcast, go to invisiblesolutionspodcast.com and remember to download the lenses, go to getthelenses.com I look forward to being with you next week. And until then, happy problem solving, Sam.