How best practices can hold companies back
Every company needs optimization, but most let it win. Calvin Ross Carl on how best practices quietly become the only thing that matters.
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl opens the discussion with how corporate thinking works. Companies of every size need and tend to focus on optimization: min-maxing effort, assessing risk, and making every move count. But inside every company there are two opposing forces, optimization and innovation, and both are necessary. The problem is that most brands let optimization win, until best practices become the only thing that matters.
Highlights
- Companies big and small naturally focus on optimization.
- Optimization and innovation are opposing forces, and both are necessary.
- Most brands let optimization win, and best practices take over.
Key insights
Optimization is the default
Assessing risk and maximizing effort is how organizations are built to think, so it rarely needs defending.
Losing the balance
The danger isn’t optimization itself. It’s letting it crowd out innovation until best practices are the only standard left.
Detailed analysis
Calvin frames this as a balance problem, not a villain story. Optimization keeps a company healthy, but because it’s the default way organizations think, it tends to take over without anyone deciding it should. Once best practices are the only thing that matters, there’s no room left for the ideas that could move the company somewhere new.
Conclusion
Keep both forces alive. When optimization wins by default, innovation loses without a fight.
We’re talking best practices and innovation. One thing to start out with is that corporate thinking—larger corporations, companies—both need and tend to focus on optimization. Big elaborate companies, even small companies, want to focus on optimization, and you want to kind of min-max all the effort you’re putting in, assessing risk, all these things. But within every company there are always these two opposing forces of optimization versus innovation. Both are necessary, but the problem is that most brands and companies end up letting optimization win, and best practices become the only thing that matters.