The dangers of getting mindset stuck

Just because those are the rules, it doesn't mean they're fixed when better ideas happen

Sketchbooks. Barn Study - photo from Ollin

Are you doing what you do today because it’s the way you, or others, have always done it?

I have little pet peeve, perhaps it’s the contrarian in me, when I hear the phrase “we don’t do it like that here”. I always want to ask. “Why?” And then if there isn’t a good answer, “have you tried doing it a different way?”

Often there’s a really good reason why things are done in a particular way. Some situation in the past that had consequence has provoked a learning that’s then turned into behaviours and ways of doing things that then become rules.

The problem is when those rules become separated from the circumstance. The factors that caused them disappear and yet the organisation does not move along with it. The behaviours get stuck and calcified.