We’ve always done it that way. Let’s hold steady. Stay the course. We’ve come this far we should see it through.
Arrggh!
How many platitudes can you fit into an exec meeting or in a so called “leadership statement” to the team?
In the current circumstances how many plans have withstood the test of our Covid-19 inspired change? Not too many I’d suggest. Does this make them wrong? Not at all. It simply means that with every change the plan has a chance of going off the rails or be enhanced.
Yet the size of the change required for us to keep looking at what we do seems out of proportion with the risk of getting things to work. Risk? Yes. We assume that risk is all downside, yet there are positive possibilities that we loosely term opportunities that really are just risks with a positive potential outcome.
Shouldn’t we look at our plans more often than each possibly apocalyptic upheaval? The simple answer is yes. So why don’t we.
Truth.
The assumption that we are “all over it” is a truth that we hold to. Perhaps it is because the alternative suggests a lack of confidence or a lack of direction (both of which can be easily shown to be false by the way). But basically, we hold on tightly to our truths.
But a real truth, at least by the expressed views of Arthur Schopenhauer, go through 3 stages:
- They are ridiculed. They are seen as so patently absurd that they can be laughed off.
- They are fought against. If these “truths” keep hanging about people try and fight them off. Perhaps they get abused (on twitter or other sources?) so that by force somehow these truths can not be real
- They are seen as self evident. Funny really. Those who fought so hard against these truths can sometimes become their biggest advocates!
What will it take for you to consider the possibility that your truth isn’t based in the current reality? What will it take for you to consider that as the world changes and adapts, so does what is now “true” for you and your business? That maybe you are holding on so tight, resisting looking at the newly presented truth that you are really in stages 1 or 2. Blockbuster, Polaroid, Borders and PanAm are just some of the examples that come to mind of businesses that did not look at whether they held on to their truths too long and that maybe they were resisting and fighting, rather than adapting.
It is hard to see new truths if you are living in the world of the existing one. If you hear phrases like “We’ve always done it that way” you might want to consider that an alarm bell rather than a comfort.
