Match the move to the situation, not to a universal best practice

The principle

Method after method, invented in disciplines that never spoke to each other, refuses the same thing: a single best practice applied regardless of context. Each replaces “here is the right way” with “first read what kind of situation this is, then select the move it actually calls for.” The failure they are all built against is the transplant - taking an approach that succeeded in one context and applying it to a superficially similar one with a different underlying type, then blaming the resulting failure on poor execution rather than on the mismatch. Wardley names this pattern directly: “outsource everything”, then “agile everything”, then “six sigma everything”, each defended by insisting the users just did it wrong. That so many independent traditions each build a situation-typing step is the evidence that the effective move genuinely is a function of the situation, not a property of the method. The principle is not relativism; it is that best practice is local to a context-type, and the first act is to identify which type you are in.

Convergent elements

Each member reads a different variable of the situation, which is what makes them corroborate rather than repeat:

• Hersey blanchard situational leadership - leadership style set by the follower’s competence and commitment for the specific task, not by the leader’s personality; re-read per task.
• Stages of change transtheoretical - match the intervention to the person’s stage of change; action-stage tactics fail on someone still pre-contemplative.
• Cynefin framework - the appropriate response differs by domain (clear / complicated / complex / chaotic); categorise the problem’s causal structure before responding.
• Method fit is gated by evolution - the right management method, purchasing approach, even accounting are gated by how evolved a component is; a complex system needs several methods running at once across its value chain.
• Pioneers settlers town planners - staff each stage of evolution with the attitude that stage demands; one team cannot both invent and industrialise the same thing well.
• Crossing the chasm - the go-to-market motion must match the adopter segment; what wins early adopters does not win the mainstream.
• Pdca deming cycle - its own lens draws the boundary: PDCA is for improving a known process, not exploring unknown territory - a member that defines where the principle stops.

Independence

The traditions are genuinely separate: leadership theory (Hersey and Blanchard), clinical psychology (Prochaska and DiClemente’s transtheoretical model), complexity science (Kurtz and Snowden’s Cynefin), Wardley mapping, technology-adoption marketing (Moore, building on Rogers), and quality management (Deming). Because none borrowed the situation-typing move from another, the convergence is real corroboration. The honest discount: Method fit is gated by evolution and Pioneers settlers town planners are both Wardley, so they count as closer to one member than two; the principle does not rest on Wardley alone.

Differentiation

The members agree on the objective and diverge on which feature of the situation they type, and that is the useful part:

• What variable you read. The person’s task-readiness (Hersey-Blanchard), their stage of acceptance (Stages of Change), the problem’s causal structure (Cynefin), the component’s evolutionary maturity (Wardley), or the market’s adopter segment (Crossing the Chasm). Choosing which model applies is itself a diagnosis of what kind of situation you are in.
• Typed at a moment, or moving along a trajectory. Cynefin and Hersey-Blanchard type the situation now and expect you to re-read it as it changes; Wardley evolution, adoption lifecycle, and Stages of Change treat the situation as travelling a known trajectory, so you re-select as it advances and can anticipate the next move.
• Discrete domains or a continuum. Cynefin has discrete domains each with its own logic (and a cliff between clear and chaotic); Wardley evolution and adoption are continua; Hersey-Blanchard is a small grid. The shape of the typology changes how sharply the move must switch.

When it applies

Reach for it whenever you are tempted to apply a best practice uniformly, or to scale a move because it worked once. The operative first step is to type the situation before choosing the move, which is why this principle pairs with Problem definition before commitment - typing the situation is part of framing the problem, and Cynefin serves both objectives. The converse failure is real and bounds the principle: treating every case as unique and refusing any standard forfeits the efficiency of a defined process where the context genuinely is stable and known. Standardise within a context-type; re-select across context-types. The Method fit is gated by evolution gradient (novel → just-do-it, then PDCA, then DMAIC once measurable) is the clearest worked example of that boundary in motion.

Falsification

The principle is refuted if a genuinely context-free best practice reliably outperforms situational selection across context-types - the original “one best way” claim of scientific management. The evidence against that is precisely the independent proliferation of situational models across unrelated fields; if one universal method existed, these disciplines would have converged on it rather than on the meta-move of typing first. The principle is bounded, not refuted, where the situation is stable and known: there a fixed standard beats constant re-selection, which is PDCA / defined-process territory and is stated as a member rather than hidden. It would be genuinely weakened if the situational models turned out to share a lineage (they do not) or if their situation-typologies contradicted each other in a way that made “type first” undecidable in practice.