The Status QuoComparing to the “status quo” is a recipe for disaster. I often use this heuristic to make decisions, but I know that it is fundamentally…
Comparing to the “status quo” is a recipe for disaster. I often use this heuristic to make decisions, but I know that it is fundamentally flawed.
A good example of this is when you are making business or administrative decisions and you give the reason “well we have always done it this way.” That is a classic scenario when you are factoring sunk costs into your answer.
You’d be surprised, but this answer is given more often than you think.
Generally speaking, at most companies, people are in the defensive. They rather say no than yes because they do not want to create more work.
So they give an answer that factors in sunk costs.
Another time where the “status quo bias” comes into effect is when we say we do not need to improve a process because it is close to normal. In this statement, we are assuming that “normal” is good.
That assumption is often wrong, as “normal” is not a goal but rather the “poor” state of the system.
Rather, we should be aiming for our metrics, irrespective of the status quo.
It can be really hard to do this, as most of our decisions take into account, even subconsciously, the entirety of our perspective, including sunk costs and other factors.
To make clearer decisions, I am trying to focus on what matters and filter out irrelevant factors.
Originally published at gonen.blog.
By jordangonen on September 20, 2017.
Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.