Stay Away from So-called Best Practices
Once you think you’re at the point that it’s time to write it down, build the manual, and document the formula, you’re no longer exploring or questioning the status quo.
—Lou Gerstner, former chairman of IBM
The same kind of thinking expressed in the above quote is what brought IBM back from the brink of extinction. Gerstner wrote a book in 2003 titled, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? in which he explained that you cannot lead as a consultant or as a manager by following. The only thing more dangerous than risking stagnation by documenting your own “success formulas” is slavishly trying to copy the success formulas of others. Yet when consultants and managers seem to be enamored by those same formulas, ...
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