Scaling Success Starts With Principles, Not Replication

A team in your organization figures something out. They have a great best practice. Customer experience improves. Performance lifts. Energy follows.

So you move quickly to scale it.

You document the approach. You share the playbook. You ask (or maybe even require) other teams to follow it.

And then… the results don’t replicate.

Not because the idea wasn’t sound. But because something essential got lost in translation.

Why “Best Practices” Break at Scale

Most organizations default to scaling best practices.

It feels efficient. Logical. Even disciplined.

But best practices are inherently tied to context:

a particular leader’s style
a team’s dynamics
a specific customer population

When you try to lift and shift them across the organization, they often lose their effectiveness.

What worked there feels forced here.

So you get compliance—but not commitment. Consistency—but not impact.

The More Scalable Approach

In our book Courageous Cultures, we offer a different discipline:

Practice the Principle.

Instead of asking:

“How do we get everyone to do this the same way?”

You ask:

“Why did this work in the first place?”

Because inside every successful practice is a principle.

And that’s what scales.

You don’t scale practices. You scale principles.

A Case Study: Three Contact Centers

Back in my Verizon days I led a 10K person organization of outsourced contact centers.

Center 1—was consistently outperforming others in customer experience.

The leader had a simple way of reinforcing empathy.

He would ask his team:

“What about Betty?” (Betty was his grandma and a pre-paid customer)

He even shared a picture of his grandmother, Betty, encouraging agents to picture someone like her on the other end of the call, rather than their stereotypical image of who bought "burner" phones.

It grounded the interaction. It humanized the work. And it showed up in the results.

The Critical Leadership Choice

At this point, many organizations would standardize the approach:

Train everyone to use the same language. Replicate the same technique. Talk about your grandma.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, the leaders asked:

“Why does this work so well?”

And the answer wasn’t the phrase.

It was the effect.

Agents were connecting with the human being behind the call.

That was the principle.

What Happened Next

With that clarity, they didn’t replicate the practice. They translated the principle.

Center 2 introduced “baby CARL” — Care About Real Lives — using visual cues to reinforce empathy (fun story... more in the book ;-)

Center 3 focused on leaders modeling empathy internally, knowing that experience would extend to customers.

Different approaches. Same principle.

And now—performance improved across all three.

The Discipline Behind the Result

This wasn’t a one-time insight. It followed a consistent process:

1. Ask why it works What is the underlying behavior driving the result?

2. Test the principle Where else might this apply?

3. Listen closely What’s working? What’s not? What are we learning?

4. Ask how we can make it better How do we refine this for different contexts?

This is how micro-innovations become scalable capability.

Why This Matters at the Executive Level

At scale, the pressure for consistency is real.

But over-standardization comes with a cost:

it suppresses ownership
it limits adaptability
it slows innovation

When you focus on principles instead:

You create clarity without rigidity
You enable consistency without uniformity
You build capability, not just compliance

Your teams don’t just follow directions. They think. They adapt. They improve.

The Strategic Shift

This is the shift:

From: Replicating behavior

To: Developing judgment

From: Enforcing playbooks

To:: Equipping people with principles

Because in a complex, fast-moving environment, your competitive advantage is not having the best playbook.

It’s having teams who know how to think.

One Question to Carry Forward

Before you scale your next “best practice,” ask:

“Are we trying to replicate what worked… or understand why it worked?”

Because only one of those will scale.

Looking for a unique experience for your next corporate offsite or association event? Here's how I incorporate YOUR best practices into my interactive keynotes, making it easy to help others practice the principle behind your sucess.