Heeding advice: filter and apply

There’s a new book out called “Rework“ written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of web application company 37signals. The pages of Rework are crammed full of straightforward business advice served up in bite-size chunks with each point covered in just one or two pages. This makes the book easy to read and the various points are grouped into important categories such as:

• Go
• Progress
• Productivity
• Competitors
• Evolution
• Promotion
• Hiring

The book is clearly intended to shock. The attention-grabbing cover design is well-suited for a manifesto containing assertions such as “Ignore the real world” and “Learning from mistakes is overrated.” Not surprisingly the book has generated a lot of controversy. The simplistic view of the spectrum of reactions is that you have on one side the traditionalists saying that the book is not just bad but dangerous and on the other side the young fans of 37signals who treat this book as a new business bible.

I can agree with most of the points made in Rework or I at least understand the reason for their inclusion in the book. Rework needs to shock its readers because many people are stuck in a rut. They continue to use the same set of practices despite a lack of success and they do so without understanding why they are using those practices. In many cases they do this simply because it’s the way they’ve always done things. Yet the advice of Rework must be taken with a grain of salt and most importantly it must be applied in measure. It is always dangerous to claim or imply that any rule is universally applicable or that it should be adopted as a best practice. Why is this? The problem is that the adjective “best” is really a misnomer as it implies that something can’t get any better. Mary Poppendieck, an authority in the world of agile and lean software development, quotes Taiichi Ohno, originator of the Toyota Production System, on this point:

“There is something called standard work, but standards should be changed constantly. Instead, if you think of the standard as the best you can do, it’s all over. The standard work is only a baseline for doing further kaizen. It is kai-aku [change for the worse] if things get worse than now, and it is kaizen [change for the better] if things get better than now. Standards are set arbitrarily by humans, so how can they not change?”

Best practices are usually defined when they are found to be effective in a particular circumstance. The danger is that some will assume that these practices should be applied equally in all circumstances. Every situation is different. Most activities are sufficiently complex that there are a myriad of constantly changing factors. Not only must any set of best practices be applied uniquely to each activity but their effect must be monitored over time. To do otherwise may lead to degrading performance as circumstances change and people fail to respond appropriately, taking false comfort in practices that might have been the best choice at one time but now require re-consideration. This risk needs to be considered across different activities and companies but also within companies. Does the application of corporate-wide policies always make sense?

Even Fried, in response to a scathing critique of his book, wrote: “Reasonable people understand these apply in most (but not all!) situations” and added:

“I do think a lot of our ideas can apply to a very broad spectrum of businesses.

I’ve personally heard from thousands of business owners in just about every industry who’ve told me many of the ideas we espouse work beautifully for them in their businesses.

But, no of course I don’t believe any idea applies to everyone.”

The more detailed a practice the greater the risk that applying it naively will lead to problems. Fundamental principles such as Employ Top Talent are more likely to hold true in a variety of situations. However, heeding such principles requires that you define concrete practices. If you apply any principle you must do so in a way that makes sense for you and your specific situation. In their quest to get through to those that just keep doing things the same old way even when those methods aren’t working, zealots of certain processes and methodologies may claim universal benefits without detailing the costs of such approaches. In the end it’s up to you to filter and apply.

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