How many times have you followed a Recipe while cooking something in the kitchen and had the result turn out not to be quite what you expected?     If you’re like me, more times than not. Sure, the result is edible (usually) but isn’t quite what you expected or what was described in the recipe.    Recipes don’t always work.

Recipes are great Starting Points for cooking great food, but a good cook will tweak that recipe to create something that is perfect for them / their family. They tweak whatever recipe they have to match their own tastes and their own inclinations.

The same is true of good leaders.

A good leader isn’t going to take something they read in a book like Good to Great and implement the idea(s) without tweaking the ‘recipe’ for their own organization, people and culture.  Just because something worked for one organization doesn’t mean it will work for another without changes. Just because Jim Collins provides insight into how a company was Successful in the paste doesn’t mean that the thing that company did will work for your organization today.

Stephen Covey made a lot of money by telling people there are seven habits that successful people follow but I guarantee there are more than seven habits that successful people can follow and plenty of successful people that do things other than his seven habits.  The same is true of systems for time and task management. Sure, the systems work but you have to ask whether they will work for you. If you don’t sit down and actually look at your task list, that task management system isn’t going to work at all for you.

I hear people say that you’ve got to write 1000 words a day (or 500 words a day…or X words a day) in order to ‘be creative.  I hear people say you have to meditate or get up at 4AM or get 10 hours of sleep or exercise every day.  I hear people say all sorts of things that have worked for them but that same process may or may not work for you and/or your company.

Recipes are great starting points and they can help create starting points for what you’re trying to do. That said, they aren’t the ‘end-all-be-all’.  When you’re working with people, recipes generally don’t work as they are written down. They require some tweaking and some changes to fit into your personal approach and/or your organization’s culture.

Next time you’re trying to do something and you think some ‘recipe’ you’ve found is the way to go, just remember – recipes don’t always work.