Revisiting Honest Practice
Looking back through my writings about honest practice, I came across this piece originally published in the
“You can’t copy your way to the top.”
This “meta lesson” from The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership struck me when advising a colleague on a grant that wanted applicants to document the use of “best practices” in their proposed project. The real kick was that the funder was only interested in new projects and proclaimed to support innovation.
My mind reeled. If “best practices” are the standards of excellence within organizations considered high performing, how can it be expected that those standards could be immediately implemented in startup programs? What of differences in organizational culture and constituencies, not to mention technical and information systems? Is innovation supported if funding follows conventional wisdom? How do we know that wisdom is valid when our industry is trained to share only the lessons of success and not of failure?
Organizations need support not just in their success, but also in their mistakes. Since the funding community is unlikely to be first jumping on this bandwagon, I propose cultivating space to learn from the honest practices we experience every day. Encourage reflection on reality when possible.
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