A hammer is not a best practice for peeling potatoes.

The concept of "best practices" is insidious. "Best" for what? We need to know what we are, our context, and our objective before we can consider the practices that will optimize our objective. Are we a tiger or a snail? Are we in a cage or a forest? Are we trying to eat or mate?

Practices provide the know-how. To provide the know-why, we must understand ourselves, our context, and our objective.

We also need to understand whether we (our system and sub-systems) and our context (our super-system) are purposeful: can any of these systems select their own means and ends. Don't ask me why—I'm still figuring this piece out myself.

For more, see Russell Ackoff: http://bit.ly/iHwQ.