“That’s the way it’s always been done.”
There’s a lot wrong with corporate America: most notably your current manager and the guy who warms up fish in the microwave EVERY F*CKING DAY. But one of the most egregious crimes against mid-level workplace humanity is the statement:
That’s the way it’s always been done.
If this lack of innovation was wholly accepted we’d still be dropping “Crackberry” jokes and firing off passive aggressive interoffice memos. Ahh, the good old days.
The Wall Street Journal recently brewed a perfect sh*t storm by more or less proclaiming “Here lies Excel” (think: 8-bit Oregon Trail grave stone). The cause of death? Change. Heads rolled and the same people who hate millennials for not staying at the same job for 45 years shook their fists in anger. Bitter, these accounting and finance professionals stepped away from their abacuses just long enough to send strongly worded letters defending Excel, their preferred means of manual data entry.
You know who doesn’t like change? People invested in the status quo. Sure sometimes change is great (i.e. Double Stuf Oreos come to mind) and sometimes it misses the mark (i.e. green ketchup) but without it, we’d be a stagnant, 3rd world economy faxing our TPS reports.
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, amirite?
So why do management members and “industry titans” (meet John: the 57 year old, 2017 Northeastern Insurance Industry Accounting Executive of the Year) vehemently reject the change from Excel to other spreadsheet based analytical tools? Do they want to pay more minions to spin their wheels on figuring out SUMIFs? Would they rather have analysts create decks using charts that haven’t changed since Windows 95? Do they thrive on explaining to stakeholders that “they’ll have to revisit that figure?” Is this even about Excel?
The answer is “no,” it isn’t about Excel or PowerPoint or even the most useless of all the Microsoft Office products, OneNote (followed closely by Visio), this is about stifling innovation in the workplace. It’s about keeping things the way they have always been. This mindset is the reason companies aren’t investing in workplace innovation to make their employees more efficient, embracing cultural shifts and eradicating the culture of sexism and abuse in the workplace. While we’re busy catering to a group whose 5 year plan includes Del Boca Vista we should be worrying about how we can stop saying “that’s the way it’s always been done,” and start saying “maybe this is the way it should be done.”
Just a thought.
