Try Direct Manipulation instead of contextless menus.
Occasionally it makes sense to allow certain UI elements to be acted upon directly as opposed to listing unassociated generic actions. When displaying lists of data for example, we typically want to allow the user to do something with the items in the list. Clicking on, or hovering over an item in this list can be used to express that a particular item is to be manipulated (deleted, renamed, etc.). Another example of common direct manipulation would be clicking on a data item (say a text based address) which then turns into an editable field. Enabling such interactions cuts through the number of required steps, compared to if the same task was started more generally without the context of the item - since selection is already taken care of. Do keep in mind of course that for generic item-agnostic actions, there is nothing wrong with contextless menus.