Few phrases end an argument in a property company faster than "it's a best practice." The moment a process, a tool, or a policy is described that way, it acquires an air of settled authority, as though it had been tested, proven, and blessed by people who know better, and questioning it starts to feel like questioning gravity. So it gets adopted, and the adoption feels like diligence.

The phrase deserves far more scrutiny than it gets. A great many things labeled "best practice" are nothing of the sort. They are common practices, things a lot of companies happen to do, relabeled with a word that implies they are optimal when all that has actually been established is that they are popular. Common and best are not the same claim, and the gap between them is where a lot of unexamined operational decisions quietly live.

Where "best practice" usually comes from

Trace a typical best practice back to its origin and you rarely find a controlled study. You find an observation about successful companies, and that observation has a flaw in it that is easy to miss.

The reasoning almost always runs like this: successful companies tend to do X, therefore X is a best practice, therefore you should do X. The hidden problem is that this looks only at the winners. It examines the companies that succeeded, notes what they have in common, and never checks whether the companies that failed were doing exactly the same things. This is one of the most famous errors in statistics, and it has a name.

During the Second World War, the American military studied bombers returning from missions to decide where to add armor, and planned to reinforce the areas where the returning planes showed the most bullet holes. The statistician Abraham Wald pointed out the mistake. As the now-standard account of survivorship bias records, the planes being studied were only the ones that made it back, so the areas with no bullet holes were precisely the places a hit was fatal: the planes hit there never returned to be counted. The armor belonged where the surviving planes had no damage, not where they had the most.

The same error runs through most best-practice reasoning. You are looking at the corporate equivalent of the planes that came back. When you observe that successful companies use a particular approach, you are studying the survivors, and you cannot see the companies that used the identical approach and failed, because they are gone and nobody writes case studies about them. "Successful companies do X" tells you very little until you also know whether the failures did X too, and that half of the data is almost never in the room when the best practice is being recommended.

Even a genuine best practice buys you parity, not advantage

Suppose the practice really is good, and doing it is genuinely better than not doing it. There is still a second problem, and it is the one the strategy literature is most emphatic about.

A practice that everyone can adopt, everyone eventually does adopt, and once everyone is doing it, it no longer distinguishes anyone. It has become the price of entry rather than a source of advantage. Michael Porter made this the centerpiece of his argument about strategy, observing that operational effectiveness, meaning performing the same activities better than rivals, is necessary but not sufficient for lasting success, because best practices diffuse rapidly and competitors can quickly imitate them. Everyone converges on the same methods, the whole industry gets more similar, and the advantage anyone hoped to gain competes itself away.

For a property company this reframes what a best practice can and cannot do. Adopting the standard approach that every competent operator uses is worth doing, because falling below the standard is a real disadvantage. But it will not put you ahead, because it is, by definition, what everyone else is also doing. It keeps you level. The mistake is not adopting best practices; it is expecting them to produce an edge they structurally cannot, and then being surprised when doing what everyone does yields results like everyone else's.

The context problem

There is a third issue, subtler than the other two and often the most damaging in practice: a practice that is genuinely best in one context can be actively harmful in another, and the label travels while the context does not.

A practice that worked at a large institutional operator with a dedicated team, mature systems, and hundreds of thousands of units may be exactly wrong for a growing regional operator with a lean team and different constraints. The practice was not best in the abstract. It was best given a particular set of conditions, and when you strip those conditions away and keep only the practice, you can import something that fits your situation badly. Best practices are extracted from their original context and applied in yours, and the fit is assumed rather than checked.

This is why an operator sometimes adopts an impeccable, widely-endorsed best practice and finds it makes things worse: heavier process than the team can sustain, controls disproportionate to the actual risk, a workflow designed for a scale they have not reached. The practice was not wrong where it came from. It was wrong for them, and the word "best" hid the question of fit that should have been asked first. This is the same discipline examined from the systems angle in when good enough is the right call: the right standard is the one that meets your actual requirements, not the most elaborate one on offer.

The honest part

This is not an argument against best practices, and the cynical version of it causes as much damage as the credulous one it corrects.

Many established practices are established for excellent reasons. Double-entry bookkeeping, reconciling accounts, segregation of duties in financial controls, backing up your data, these are not fashions, they are hard-won lessons often paid for in other people's disasters, and the arrogance of ignoring them because "best practice is overrated" is how companies repeat avoidable mistakes. The point is not to dismiss accumulated wisdom. It is to distinguish practices that earned their standing from practices that merely achieved popularity.

It is also true that for most of what a company does, parity is exactly what you want, and originality would be reckless. You do not need a proprietary, differentiated approach to payroll, tax compliance, or fire safety. You need the standard, proven approach that keeps you out of trouble, and reaching for something clever there is a way to invent new problems. Best practices are the right tool for the large category of activities where being normal is the goal and being different is a risk. Reserve the scrutiny for the places where you were told a practice would give you an edge, or where it does not fit your context, not for the settled basics.

And some best practices are genuinely, universally best, independent of context, and pretending everything is situational is its own evasion. The discipline is not treating every practice as suspect. It is knowing which kind of practice you are looking at before you adopt it.

Ask the three questions before you adopt

The practical move is to treat "it's a best practice" not as the end of the conversation but as the start of a short one. Three questions separate the practices worth adopting from the ones worth questioning.

• First, best according to whom, and measured how? If the honest answer is that a lot of companies do it, you have learned it is common, not that it is best, and common is a much weaker reason. Ask whether anyone has actually established that it produces better outcomes, or only that it is widespread. This is the same distinction between a proven discipline and a popular label that runs through what a single source of truth actually requires: the word doing the persuading is often carrying more authority than the evidence behind it.

• Second, best for whom, in what context? Find out where the practice originated and under what conditions, and ask whether those conditions resemble yours. A practice built for a scale, team, or risk profile unlike yours may need to be adapted heavily or declined, and the label will not tell you that. You have to ask.

• Third, am I expecting this to keep me level or to get me ahead? If you are adopting it to avoid falling below the standard, that is a sound reason and parity is the correct goal. If you are expecting it to create an advantage, remember that anything everyone can copy will be copied, and the edge you are counting on may not survive contact with an industry doing the same thing.

None of this slows down the genuinely settled basics, which you should adopt without ceremony. It applies where the stakes or the fit are uncertain, and there the three questions cost a few minutes and occasionally save you from importing something popular, ill-fitting, or merely fashionable under a word that discouraged you from checking. Best is a claim about outcomes. Common is a claim about frequency. Knowing which one you are actually being offered is most of the work.

FAQs

Q1. Are you saying we should ignore best practices?
No. Many established practices earned their standing through hard experience, financial controls, reconciliation, data backups, and ignoring them repeats avoidable mistakes. The argument is narrower: a large share of things labeled "best practice" are actually just common practices, popular rather than proven, and the label discourages the scrutiny that would tell the difference. Adopt the genuinely settled ones freely; question the ones whose only credential is that many companies do them.

Q2. What is the difference between a best practice and a common practice?
A best practice is one demonstrated to produce better outcomes. A common practice is simply one that many organizations happen to follow. The two often get conflated because "a lot of companies do this" gets restated as "this is best," but frequency is not evidence of quality. Something can be widespread and mediocre, or even widespread and harmful, and calling it a best practice hides that possibility behind an authoritative-sounding word.

Q3. What does survivorship bias have to do with best practices?
Most best practices come from observing what successful companies do, which studies only the survivors. Like the WWII analysts who wanted to armor the bullet holes on returning planes, this ignores the companies that did the same things and failed, because they are no longer around to study. "Successful companies do X" is not evidence that X works until you also know whether the failed companies did X too, and that data is almost never examined.

Q4. If a best practice really is good, why wouldn't it give us an advantage?
Because anything every company can adopt eventually gets adopted by every company, at which point it distinguishes no one. It becomes the cost of entry rather than a source of advantage. As Porter argued, operational effectiveness diffuses rapidly through imitation, so doing the same activities as everyone else, even doing them well, keeps you level rather than ahead. A genuine best practice is worth having; expecting it to create a lasting edge misunderstands what it can do.

Q5. How can a best practice be harmful?
When it is imported without its original context. A practice that was genuinely optimal for a large operator with mature systems and a dedicated team can be wrong for a lean, growing operator with different constraints, producing process heavier than the team can sustain or controls disproportionate to the actual risk. The practice was best given specific conditions, and when those conditions do not travel with it, the fit has to be checked rather than assumed.

Q6. Isn't parity with competitors a good thing?
Often, yes, and for most activities it is exactly what you want. You do not need a differentiated approach to payroll, tax compliance, or safety; you need the standard, proven one that keeps you out of trouble. Parity is the correct goal for the large category of activities where being normal is safe and being different is risky. The caution applies only when a practice is sold as a source of advantage, or when it does not fit your situation.

Q7. How do I tell a genuine best practice from a merely common one?
Ask three questions before adopting. Best according to whom, and measured how, which separates proven from merely popular. Best for whom, in what context, which surfaces whether it fits your scale and constraints. And whether you expect it to keep you level or get you ahead, which sets a realistic expectation, since anything copyable will be copied. The settled basics pass these easily; the questionable ones reveal themselves quickly.

Q8. Does this apply to adopting property management software best practices too?
Yes, and it is worth asking the same three questions there. Some software practices are genuinely settled and should be adopted without fuss. Others are common conventions specific to a particular scale or operating model, and importing them into a different context can add process or complexity you do not need. The useful habit is to ask whether a recommended approach is proven and fits your situation, rather than adopting it because it is described as standard.