Adapt Best Practice

Customize a practice for specific constraints while preserving its core effectiveness.

Why This Is Best Practice

Adopted by: Situational Leadership (Hersey & Blanchard, 1969) is the canonical model for context-sensitive application — the same leadership approach applied uniformly across different team maturities produces worse outcomes than adapting to the situation. Lean manufacturing explicitly distinguishes between principles (non-negotiable) and tools (adapt to context) — Toyota Production System practitioners are trained to identify which is which before adapting. Contextual design methodology (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1997) formalizes user-centered adaptation for design processes. Impact: Organizations that apply best practices without adaptation to their context show lower adoption and higher abandonment rates than those that receive context-appropriate versions (McKinsey Organizational Health research, 2017). The most common reason practitioners abandon practices is "it doesn't fit how we work" — which usually means the form, not the substance, was incompatible. Adaptation preserves adoption. Why best: The alternative — "apply the canonical practice or don't apply it" — produces two failure modes: abandonment when constraints make full compliance impossible, and compliance theater when people go through the motions without the core substance. Explicit Core/Adjustable/Optional classification makes the difference visible: what must stay, what can flex, and what can be skipped without breaking the practice's fundamental value.

Sources: Hersey & Blanchard (1969) "Management of Organizational Behavior"; Womack & Jones (1996) "Lean Thinking"; McKinsey Organizational Health Index research

Steps

Step 1: Identify the practice and constraints

From user input: "apply X but we're a 2-person team", "we're in a regulated industry", "we don't have budget for Y", "our team is new to this."