A more accurate way to say “best practices” is to say “minimally acceptable”. This one trick is especially helpful when talking to management.
If everyone is doing it, then it means it’s the bare minimum that you should be doing, in order to be the “best”, you’ll need to go far above and beyond “minimally acceptable”.
When management hears, “best practices”, they think, “If we do that we’re done!”, which is not true, but they don’t understand that. When you try to improve things management becomes an impediment, but they usually don’t explain themselves, because they think it’s obvious, we’re already doing the “best”, why do we need to do anything else?
If everyone is doing it, then it means it’s the bare minimum that you should be doing, in order to be the “best”, you’ll need to go far above and beyond “minimally acceptable”.
When management hears, “best practices”, they think, “If we do that we’re done!”, which is not true, but they don’t understand that. When you try to improve things management becomes an impediment, but they usually don’t explain themselves, because they think it’s obvious, we’re already doing the “best”, why do we need to do anything else?