Do you consider surgery to be a "simple task"? Hospitals that enforced use of a standardized 19-item safety checklist saw their patient mortality cut in half (no pun intended) and their rate of complications drop from 11% to 7% (NEJM, JAN2009). Talk to any surgeon, and they'll tell you that surgery is NOT widget-fastening. Every surgery is different. Yet, a simple checklist drastically improves outcomes.

There are times when it makes sense to re-contextualize, and there are times when it makes more sense to simply adopt someone else's best practice.

Pronouncements like "there are no easy answers" and "imitating what others do is not the way to make progress" are dogmatic.

Sometimes there is an easy answer--like using a checklist that reinforces practices that you probably thought you were doing all along. Sometimes imitating others does help an individual make progress--like when a poor performer slavishly mirros the behaviors of his successful co-worker.

Admitting this won't get you an article in Fast Company, and it probably won't make a great blog entry...but there it is.