best practices

There was a woman who sold rice and beans at the corner of the market in Ibadan, and everyone, even the new sellers three stalls down, copied the way she arranged her scale. And not since a law said so, but because her customers never argued about weight, and her queue never stopped moving. That, in plain terms, is a best practice. Nobody wrote it into a rulebook. It simply worked so well, so many times, that copying it became the sensible thing to do.

In business, best practices are the same idea, just dressed in a suit. They are the habits, checklists and ways of working that people in an industry have tried, tested and agreed give the most reliable results with the least drama. Keeping receipts for every business expense. Confirming a customer's account name before you send goods. Backing up your files before you update your laptop. None of these are laws from the National Assembly. They are simply what experience has taught careful people to do.

A small business owner in Lagos who wants a bank loan will often be told to keep proper records, separate personal and business accounts, and issue invoices for every sale. This is best practice, and not since a regulator is watching, but because it is the difference between a business that can explain itself and one that cannot.

In the United Kingdom, a Nigerian landlord letting out a flat in Manchester is expected to follow best practices like getting a gas safety certificate every year and protecting the tenant's deposit in a proper scheme. Skipping these does not always lead to punishment immediately, but it calmly stacks risk against you, the way ignoring a rattling car engine does.

Best practices change as industries learn new lessons, so what was standard ten years ago in, say, food safety or online payments, may now look careless. The wise thing is to keep asking what the most experienced people in your field are doing differently this year, and why.