Are "Best Practices" Worth Following?

Management consultants are always talking about best practices, but I'm not convinced that the experiences of big-name firms are all that relevant when it comes to regular companies. No, I'll go further. I think that the enshrining of "best practices" makes companies do things that were smart for the original firm, but completely stupid for the firm that tries to imitate them.

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Management consultants are always talking about best practices, but I'm not convinced that the experiences of big-name firms are all that relevant when it comes to regular companies. No, I'll go further. I think that the enshrining of "best practices" makes companies do things that were smart for the original firm, but completely stupid for the firm that tries to imitate them.

For example, whenever I write about branding, somebody (usually a marketeer) trots out the Coke brand and tries to use it as an exemplar of the power of branding. I'm not impressed, because I believe that brand is mostly a reflection of product and distribution rather than the activities traditionally associated with "branding."

But let's suppose that "branding" really did create the Coke brand. Why would anyone one assume that the activities that established the Coke brand would still work today, or would work for another company? Consider:

• Times Have Changed. Maybe massive, broad-based advertising WAS instrumental to Coke's branding in the past. But that was then; this is now. Today, 220 cable channels, TIVO, and the Internet have transformed pretty much all advertising into SPAM. And SPAM just annoys and irritates most people. So what (may have) worked for Coke in the past probably isn't going to work today.
• The Rules are Different. Coke been around for a hundred years, and has become part of world culture. Because of that history, when it comes to publicity and such, Coke can (and must) play by different rules. For example, if Coke were an exemplar for high tech branding, no high tech firm would ever claim its product was "new" since "New Coke" was a major failure.
• Differentiation is Vital. Even if times were the same and the rules were the same, why would it be a good idea to do exactly what your competitor is doing? A great deal of the challenge of surviving in the business word is differentiating yourself from everyone else. How can you do that by doing exactly what other firms are doing or have done?

I've seen the same thing in high tech, by the way. The graveyard of the computer hardware industry is full of companies that tried to imitate IBM's "best practices." Same thing with the computer software industry, where imitating Microsoft's strategy is a one-way-ticket to obscurity. Both IBM and Microsoft are sui generis -- they're unique, with unique market positions. Imitating them gets you nowhere.

The same is true of sales techniques. Some sales trainers continue to teach techniques that might have worked 30 years ago, but which today are completely ridiculous. I gave some examples of this in "Do Trick Closes Really Work?" -- sales techniques that used to be "chapter and verse" but which have completely lost their magic.

I think that some sales strategies are beginning to get a little worn, too. The "consultative" sales model, for instance, is starting to annoy some buyers, according to numerous comments that have posted on this blog. Something else is evolving, a model that assumes deep mutual knowledge on both sides due to the availability of research. I'll be writing about this in a future post.

Another problem with "best practices" is that when those practices become widely known, adopting them just makes you into an also-ran. You might be better off figuring out something completely new -- that other people will someday imitate -- than trying to borrow what worked elsehere.

Am I saying that you can't learn something from looking at other successful firms? No. But I am saying that what worked for a completely different company in a completely different era is probably not going to work for your firm, today.

READERS: What do you think? Are "best practices" everything they're cracked up to be?