Ray, interesting and useful perspective. Though I think they should use best principles to set their strategy, and then maybe use best practices on the way. Though I’d hate their implementation to fail because they couldn’t recontextualize. But your point is well taken. Thanks!

I like your idea of trying to identify best principles instead of best practices. Underlying principles are more powerful than rote procedures, and more meaningful. But in defense of best practices: so much of our industry is so far behind that even implementing an outdated best practice might leapfrog some organizations ahead substantially. Sure, the improved outcome will still be out of date, but not as out of date as the org’s previous practice. More than a few organizations are so woefully far behind the times that they may need to leap ahead in smaller chunks, absorbing and then taking some time to integrate the new ideas before attempting the next leap to a newer (if not quite current) “best practice”, iterating through this process several times in order to finally be in a position to get current or (ideally) leap ahead with an eye (at last!) on identifying and implementing some best principles.