Best practices are the residue of someone else's solved problem.
When everyone follows them, differentiation becomes impossible.
Industries converge toward mediocrity through collective mimicry.
The Pattern
A company does something novel and succeeds.
Consultants abstract it into a framework.
Everyone implements the framework.
The original advantage disappears.
Best practices are institutional cosplay
What Works Instead
- Solve for your specific constraints
- Study adjacent industries, not competitors
- Build systems that compound over time
- Make reversible decisions quickly
The Real Work
Document your actual process, not the idealized version.
Share what failed, not just what worked.
Build tools for your problems, then share them.
Let others abstract the lessons.