Against Best Practices

Dan Morena, CTO at Upright.com, made the point that every startup was unique and therefore every startup had to find out what was best for it, while ignoring whatever was considered "best practice." I wrote what he told me here:

https://respectfulleadership.substack.com/p/dan-morena-is-a-...

My summary of his idea:

No army has ever conquered a country. An army conquers this muddy ditch over here, that open wheat field over there and then the adjoining farm buildings. It conquers that copse of lush oak trees next to the large outcropping of granite rocks. An army seizes that grassy hill top, it digs in on the west side of this particular fast flowing river, it gains control over the 12 story gray and red brick downtown office building, fighting room to room. If you are watching from a great distance, you might think that an army has conquered a country, but if you listen to the people who are involved in the struggle, then you are aware how much "a country" is an abstraction. The real work is made up of specifics: buildings, roads, trees, ditches, rivers, bushes, rocks, fields, houses. When a person talks in abstractions, it only shows how little they know. The people who have meaningful information talk about specifics.

Likewise, no one builds a startup. Instead, you build your startup, and your startup is completely unique, and possesses features that no other startup will ever have. Your success will depend on adapting to those attributes that make it unique.

The army that is conquering is carrying best practice weapons, wearing best practice boots, best practice fatigues, best practice tanks, trucks, etc.

They're best practice aiming, shooting, walking, communicating, hiring (mercs), hiding, etc...

The people that are in the weeds are just doing the most simple things for their personal situation as they're taking over that granite rock or "copse of lush oak trees".

It's easy to use a lot of words to pretend your point has meaning, but often, like KH - it doesn't.

This is frequently not true. There’s examples all through history of weaker and poorer armies defeating larger ones. From Zulus, to the American Revolution, to the great Emu wars. Surely the birds were not more advanced than men armed with machine guns. But it’s only when the smaller forces can take advantage and leverage what they have better than others. It’s best practices, but what’s best is not universal, it’s best for who, best for when, best for under what circumstances