Why “Best Practice” Is the Wrong Answer for Growing Your Business

The safest answer is often the one that quietly shrinks your options.

When I was 16, leaving Germany to join my family in the United States, I dug up a small seedling from a beloved backyard tree the night before my flight. I packed it carefully — a gift for my mom, something living to plant in our new life. Mid-flight, the customs declaration asked the question that forces a choice: are you bringing a live plant?

The conventional move is to avoid trouble. The better move is to think, be honest, and accept the risk. What happened next is a funny border moment — but it carries a serious lesson about judgment that I’ve never forgotten.

What this means for founders, CEOs, and operators making real decisions under uncertainty:
→ “Best practice” becomes a trap when you’re trying to grow
→ Expanding into a new category, channel, or go-to-market process actually requires you to think creatively 
→ Stop outsourcing your thinking and start trusting your instinct

The loudest advice can sound logical and still be completely wrong for your business, your timing, and your customer.

What “obvious” rule are you ready to question?

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Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler 

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN 

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com 

Transcript

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Why Best Practice Can Mislead

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So sometimes the conventional answer, the best practice answer, the you know, sort of logical, well, that's the way you do it, answer is not always the right answer, right? Uh sometimes conventional wisdom isn't wise at all. Uh and now how does that apply to your business? You know, you you you know, as a CEO and executive, all day long you have to answer questions in your own mind or from your team or from your customer. Should you add this adjacent category? Should you access and pursue this new channel of distribution? Should you, you know, how do you uh do a better job of building a go-to-market process? Um, and don't fall in the trap of just sort of googling it and chat GPTing the answer that is you know the conventional wisdom.

A Teen Brings A Tree

SPEAKER_00 0:51

I'll give you a quick story. When I was a teenager and followed my parents to the United States, they had arrived a couple months before me. Uh, I was finishing up school as a 16-year-old in Germany. The night before leaving Germany, I went into the backyard uh where there was a large tree that we had, my siblings and I had given to my mom many years ago on a Mother's Day, and it was now kind of a large tree, and it had a little seedling, you know, on the ground around it. You know, a uh a seed had become a little tree, like you know, one year old, uh, you know, like yay big or something. And I was like, wouldn't it be nice if I just dug up that little seedling and put it into a ziploc bag with water, you know, wrap it with you know soft paper and water. That way it would survive the 24-hour trip or a 48-hour trip uh across the Atlantic Ocean, and then I would arrive on this farm I had never been to with a gift to my mother, um, with a tree uh from her backyard in Germany, a Mother's Day gift. So I I I was super excited about it, and I did that, put it in my backpack. Uh, my brother and sister drove from Konstanz to Frankfurt and dropped me off at the airport, and I flew to the United States, and I'm you know, scared and and and all kinds of emotions, obviously.

Customs Form And The Risk

SPEAKER_00 2:22

But in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you know, the stewardesses are handing out the customs declarations. And there are, first of all, to read the customs declaration, I don't know, it might have been a translation, they might have given me a German translation form, uh, or maybe I have to look it up every word in the dictionary because I didn't really speak English at the time. But my point is that I came across that section where it says, you know, do you bring over X tens of thousands of dollars of cash? No. Uh do you bring uh fruits or vegetables? Yes or no? No. Do you bring uh live plants? Yes or no? Plants, a tree. Okay, uh conventional answer might have been, you know, you might have been tempted to lie because like if you say yes, they might not let you in. And then but then you might get arrested, and that that wouldn't be good. Uh so I I chose yes, obviously, right? Um, and then it said, if yes, what kind of a life plant? And I had to look up the English word for tree, and I wrote down T-R-E-E.

The “Tree” Misunderstanding

SPEAKER_00 3:35

And um a couple hours later we land, go through customs, they ask for my passport, I give them my passport, and then they he looks at that little custom declaration and says, What do you mean you have a tree? And I pointed to my backpack and I said, Tree. And the guy is like, You stupid kid, you don't know English. And I just get out of here. That's you don't know the word for backpack. That's backpack, it's not tree. So the conventional wisdom answer, you know, probably would have led me to either not bring the tree or or or answer it differently, but I

Lesson For Leaders And Growth

SPEAKER_00 4:16

answered it actually in an unconventional way and truthfully, and 48 hours later, planted. We planted that little tree on the farm, and decades later, you know, for many decades, it it gave joy. Um, and I have a poster in my office here that my kids gave me based on that story, and it's a it's a poster of a girl that has a little toy elephant there on a string, a toy elephant on wheels, and she's looking at the door, you know, sort of looking up. It says strictly no elephants. Um, and the implication being that you know dang well that she's gonna walk through that door that says strictly no elephants. So I share that story to say, to encourage you, don't always just give go with a clawed or chat GPT answer or the conventional wisdom that isn't wisdom at all sometimes, or the best practice, but think a little bit and and trust or think you know creatively and and trust your instinct. Um, and uh if you want to talk through what that does that mean for you know growth in your business, uh DM me or you know uh comment down below, I will answer it. I'd love to have a conversation uh with you about how to use this concept to grow your business.