A client once told us they wanted to implement “industry best practices” across their operations.
When we asked what that meant, the answer was simple:
“Whatever the top performers in our space are doing.”
It sounds logical. If the leaders are doing something, it must work. So why not copy it?
Because best practices are context-dependent.
What works for a $500M company with 800 employees rarely works for a $20M business with 60. What works in a high-velocity, transactional model breaks in complex enterprise sales. What works when you dominate a market fails when you're still fighting for share.
We see this most often with process adoption.
A company reads that Amazon uses a particular planning framework and tries to replicate it. Or they see a competitor restructure their sales organisation and follow suit.
Then it fails.
Not because the practice is wrong — but because it was designed for a different environment, with different constraints, capabilities, and goals.
Take a mid-market software company we worked with. They decided to implement account-based marketing after reading it was a best practice for enterprise sales. They hired consultants, invested in tools, and launched the programme.
Six months later, pipeline hadn’t improved.
The issue wasn’t execution — it was fit. Account-based marketing works when you’re targeting a small number of high-value accounts. They were trying to apply it across hundreds. The result wasn’t true personalisation, just a more expensive version of what they were already doing.
The best practice wasn’t wrong. It was wrong for them.
The same pattern shows up in organisational design. Companies copy structures they’ve seen elsewhere — reorganising by product, geography, or segment — without understanding why those structures were created in the first place.
What they miss is that structure follows strategy. If the underlying conditions aren’t the same, the structure adds complexity instead of clarity.
Best practices are useful — but only as starting points.
They show what has worked in a specific context. Your job is to understand why it worked, whether those conditions apply to you, and what needs to change if they don’t.
A better approach is simple:
First, understand the problem the practice was designed to solve. If it’s not your problem, it’s not your solution.
Second, assess whether you have the prerequisites. Many practices assume a level of scale, capability, or maturity that may not exist yet.
Third, test before committing. Pilot the approach in a controlled environment before rolling it out across the business.
Most companies skip these steps. They assume what worked elsewhere will work for them — and implement at scale too quickly.
That’s where things break.
Strategy isn’t about copying what others do.
It’s about making deliberate choices based on your reality — your constraints, your capabilities, and your ambition.
The companies that outperform don’t follow best practices.
They build what works.
