Best Practices Are Not Strategy
Why great companies don’t copy what works — they build what fits
In fast-scaling organizations, “best practices” can feel like a shortcut to legitimacy. Need a performance review system? Grab one from a company you admire. Want to drive engagement? Find what Google does and repurpose it. Launching a manager training program? Let’s see how Meta runs theirs.
It makes sense. In early-stage orgs, everything feels fragile. Borrowing from what's proven offers reassurance. It says: “We’re building this the right way.” But here’s the catch:
Best practices are only useful when pressure-tested against your business model, your constraints, and your goals.
Otherwise, they’re just theater. Expensive theater.
Strategy Is Contextual
What worked for Stripe might not work for your Series A AI company with 25 people and a 9-month runway. What worked for Netflix might not help you lead a team split across Rwanda, California, and Singapore. What worked for a high-margin SaaS giant might actively slow down a low-margin delivery business where every second counts.
Strategy is about making deliberate choices in context — not borrowing someone else’s. That includes your People strategy.
As Sara Blakely once put it:
"Don't be intimidated by what you don't know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else."
That’s what great business leaders already understand. But too often, People leaders don’t apply the same strategic rigor. They borrow what looks polished, instead of building what actually fits. And I get it, because I’ve been there. There can be immense pressure to be the slick solution provider, to “add value” with something that looks executive-ready.
But here’s the thing: strategy isn’t about looking smart. It’s about making your org smarter.
Resist the urge to lead with demoware. Focus on substance.
Systems That Look Good Don’t Always Work Well
One of the biggest red flags I see in People Ops is mistaking polish for performance. You can launch a sleek leveling framework that no one uses. You can implement quarterly calibration cycles that feel fair but delay business decisions. You can roll out beautiful engagement surveys with zero follow-through, and actually lose trust. None of that is strategy. It’s system cosplay.
When Best Practices Create Misalignment
This tension shows up everywhere. A CEO wants to see a polished framework. They want something that looks “strategic” and scalable on a slide. But what they actually need is faster decision-making, more aligned teams, and clearer accountability.
An HRBP may prefer a clean playbook or an off-the-shelf training they can roll out. But what the org needs is something messier — deep relationship-building, signal gathering, and coaching managers and ICs alike on good judgment in complex, high-context situations.
This is the misalignment. Best practices offer the illusion of certainty and control. But strategy lives in the reality of trade-offs, ambiguity, and emergence.
Build for the Business, Not the Template
At Palantir and Merlin, we resisted the pressure to “professionalize” our systems too early.
Instead, we asked:
What friction are we trying to solve?
What are the real constraints — time, talent, trust?
Will this system scale with us, or slow us down?
The right answer never came from someone else’s deck. It came from sitting with the complexity, and choosing what actually fit. That fit often looked different from what People teams were used to. It wasn’t about having the cleanest rubric or the most robust documentation; it was about making the next decision faster, with more alignment and less noise. That’s not something you can roll out. It’s something you build in. That mindset takes discipline though and it’s a muscle you have to work every day. But it’s not exclusive to early-stage orgs or frontier tech. Anyone building systems, especially People leaders, can apply this lens.
It's worth noting that "best practices" aren't inherently bad. They can offer a valuable starting point, providing insights into common challenges and potential solutions. However, their true value lies in how rigorously they are adapted and integrated into your specific context. Think of them as ingredients. You can look at successful recipes, but you still need to adjust the quantities and cooking methods to suit your available tools and desired outcome.
Take This With You
If you're a People leader (or anyone building systems right now) here’s a place to start:
Take one system you’ve inherited. Maybe it’s your performance review cycle, onboarding flow, or leveling framework. Pressure-test it against your business today. This involves asking critical questions like:
What specific problem are we genuinely trying to solve with this system? (Not just what problem is the "best practice" supposed to solve).
Does this system align with our core values and the way we actually operate?
What are the unintended consequences of implementing this system in our environment?
What are the real costs – in terms of time, resources, and potential disruption?
How will we measure the success (or failure) of this system in our context?
What are our non-negotiables and constraints that might make this "best practice" impractical or counterproductive?
Then. and only then, look at what others are doing. Use best practices for reference, not as your north star.
