BAU, WTF?
Why I hate the term BAU
By Janet Balneaves
I hear the term BAU being used frequently and I recently started to question what people exactly mean by these three little letters. What I learned was that we did not have a common and shared understanding of what BAU meant or stood for across all our squads at Skyscanner. Wikipedia told me:
Business as usual (BAU) — the normal execution of standard functional operations within an organization — forms a possible contrast to projects or programmes which might introduce change. BAU may also stand in contradistinction to external events which may have the effect of unsettling or distracting those inside an organisation. Wikipedia
I work in Growth, for me ‘the normal execution of standard operations within an organisation’ are congruent to Growth, which made me wonder if BAU should exist at all in a company which is achieving huge growth and aims to continue to do so.
I decided to create my own definition which feels to fit my context: ‘The repeatable/frequent work we do that we believe is responsible for maintaining the current growth trajectory.’ And then started to ask:
- Is maintaining the current growth trajectory going to achieve hyper growth?
- Is BAU accepting a status quo, can a status quo lead us to hyper growth?
Status quo is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regards to social or political issues. In the sociological sense, it generally applies to maintain or change existing social structure and values. With regards to policy debate, the status quo refers to how conditions are at the time and how the affirmative team can solve these conditions.
It is the nominal form of the prepositional Latin phrase “in statu quo” — literally “in the state in which”, which itself is a shortening of the original phrase in statu quo res erant ante bellum, meaning “in the state in which things were before the war”. To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are. The related phrase status quo ante, literally “the state in which before”, means “the state of affairs that existed previously”. Wikipedia
There is evidence that uncertainty favours status quo and we in Skyscanner certainly work in a fast pace and ever changing business. But accepting the status quo may be perceived to be an easy route and it may allow us to not ask difficult and uncomfortable questions of ourselves. In the long run it’s probably not going to be the successful path from a growth perspective.
My conclusion is that by using the word BAU we are in fact, in some situations, accepting a status quo. And this is the reason I hate the word BAU, because I believe we should never settle for the status quo because it will never achieve hypergrowth in a business.
Every day new companies are entering and disrupting marketplaces — Uber, Airbnb, Slack to name a few. Have they achieved hypergrowth, gone from Zero to One by accepting a status quo, by accepting it’s impossible to create new ways or better ways to do things? I suspect not. If we fall into big company mind-set where knowledge is power and we are so big and dominant we don’t need to change, we will be disrupted: it’s just a matter of time as to when. We need to strive to improve, be the best that we can be, find better ways to do the things we need to do and find new ways to achieve what we never thought possible.
I am not saying there is no value in these frequent and standard operations. We simply need to ensure we establish which do and which don’t attribute to growth and ensure we don’t assume that because something added value yesterday it guarantees it will add value tomorrow. For the work that we do that does add value, we need to continually look for smarter, faster ways to do these things more effectively, to give us capacity to find the new opportunities opening up. We can use Lean to enable us to always be alert to the seven types of waste in everything we do and seek to eliminate it, always strive to not accept a status quo.
The only constant in the Internet Economy is change.
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About the Author
My name is Janet Balneaves and I am currently the Product Owner for the Travel Content Platform squad in our Central Growth Tribe in Skyscanner. In my 3 years at Skyscanner I have had the opportunity to work in a very wide variety of areas from engineering to most recently joining Growth to be part of our amazing transformation into Growth Tribes from a more traditional marketing function.
My own skills and expertise have grown and evolved massively as part of this journey. Skyscanner has a value “Master, Teach, Learn” which shows the commitment Skyscanner has to learning. As Skyscanner grows it is constantly evolving there are always a vast range of new and interesting problems to be solved thus more new skills to be honed and developed. I am looking forward to continuing on my Skyscanner journey, who knows where it will take me next.
