Challenging tghe status can lead to greater organizational efficiency and innovation
No matter your industry, sooner or later you likely will come up against the status quo. The status quo is safe and comfortable; going beyond it can seem risky. After all, organizations don’t want to fall flat and give their competitors a chance to get ahead.
However, leaders who are afraid to challenge the status quo tend to be the ones who get left behind. The businesses that experience the greatest success and truly thrive are those that don’t just occasionally challenge the status quo, but regularly confront it.
More than ever, companies need to embrace progressive, innovated thinking in all aspects of how they run the organization, from how they deliver products and services to how they manage contracts with clients and partners.
1. Thriving businesses make good processes even better
A process need not be broken to be challenged. Even when the status quo is working well, it is worth considering how changes can be made to improve operational efficiency.
Business leaders should prioritize the processes most crucial to their operations, particularly those that are used frequently or take up a lot of their team’s time and efforts. Strategies such as delegation and automation — or simply adopting new tools that enable your teams to work more efficiently — can vastly improve productivity.
Thriving businesses regularly reassess their processes — with the most progressive participating in regular benchmarking forums such as those provided by APQC. Marisa Brown leads APQC’s supply chain research and benchmarking program, which involves over 500 APQC member organizations who participate in regular benchmarking events to evaluate their processes against best practices.
“The best companies consistently reevaluate their current status quo. And the very best don’t just settle for seeking a ‘best-in-class’ benchmark – but rather, push to continually raise the bar for their industries,” Brown says.
2. Innovative thinking taps into unsolved pain points
Businesses that are willing to challenge the conventional way of doing things can completely revolutionize their industry. One need only look at how ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft disrupted traditional taxi services, or how Amazon turned e-commerce from an afterthought to a cornerstone of every major retailer’s strategy.
Just about every industry has untapped potential to challenge the status quo. Yoav Vilner, CEO of Walnut, explains how his company is shaking up the way organizations use software demos.
“Ever since the birth of SaaS, organizations have been providing generic ‘one-size-fits-all’ demos to their sales prospects. But all too often, these generic demos were ‘one-size-fits-none.’ We wanted to create a platform that would allow clients to create and manage customizable, interactive software demos.”
Vilner’s advice? “Today’s leaders need to look beyond what everyone else is doing to find new ideas that help you stand out from the rest.” One way to do this is to look for opportunities to make products or services more convenient or user-friendly, more affordable or simply more accessible so your brand can confront the status quo.
3. Challenging the status quo reduces inefficiencies
While there is much to be said for making a “good” process even better, it is an fact that many businesses have a variety of inefficiencies that keep them from reaching their full potential. A willingness to challenge the status quo makes an organization better able to directly confront the roadblocks that are holding the business back.
A good tip for getting beyond the initial roadblocks and to find the root cause is the simple, yet well-known “Ask why five times” method. When teams collaborate to ask “why” five times, they often unlock and solve true systemic issues that can lead to increased productivity, sales and other vital improvements in places where it is not always so obvious.
For example, when Dell did this, they discovered perverse incentives in contracts that were preventing their reverse logistics supplier from investing in continuous improvement and innovation. The result? Shifting to a win-win sourcing business model and removing contractual perverse incentives with their supplier reduced Dell’s reverse logistics cost structure by 50 percent in just two years.
Or consider this Marketing Sherpa case study, which highlights how a financial institution recognized that its digital mortgage application sales funnel was experiencing length-related friction because its marketing email led to a landing page before taking prospects to its solutions finder. Though landing pages are a common practice in many industries, they decided to eliminate the landing page and rework the email copy. Their conversion rate increased by 181 percent.
4. Challenging the status quo empowers employees
Business leaders don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. Those ideas can come from team members at all levels of the company, but they will only be willing to share their insights if the company culture encourages it.
Toyota has been doing this since 1951 with its Creative Idea Suggestion System. This was specifically introduced as an ongoing, widespread effort that was meant to last, unlike other “idea festivals” of the time that quickly came and went.
The initial documents sent out when introducing the program made it clear that ideas could come from anyone, that the company would pay for good ideas and work quickly to implement them. Workers didn’t have to get permission from a manager to submit their ideas, either.
By clearly explaining the why, incentivizing workers to share ideas and following through with the program, Toyota established a baseline for success in gaining innovative ideas from its employees.
Thriving businesses actively involve team members in sharing their perspectives. This helps employees become more actively engaged and feel like their contribution matters to the organization as a whole.
As a recent analysis from Gartner reveals, “Employees want a more human employment value proposition: They want employers to recognize their value and provide value to them on a human level. Monetary compensation is important for surviving, but deeper relationships, a strong sense of community and purpose-driven work are essential to thriving. This is the value that employees expect their employers to provide.”
Empowering and engaging employees to challenge the status quo will help them stay engaged and feel truly valued, greatly boosting retention efforts. In that sense, the ideas they’ll generate is a bonus.
Building a better future for your brand
Not all aspects of the status quo need to be changed. Sometimes, a practice will become an industry standard because it simply is the best way to get things done. However, forward-thinking business leaders should always be willing to question the status quo.
Simply put, change must start by being willing to change. Even if the change efforts are a series of small changes, they can have a significant impact in the long run, helping your business thrive for years to come.
