We’ve all heard about Best Practices. Best Practices are defined as “commercial or professional procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective.” But what happens when best practices are no longer “correct” or “most effective?” Then what do you do?
Status quo bias comes in many forms. Along with an unwillingness to change, one of the way status quo bias gets in your way is when you fall victim to the trap of “best practices.” It’s another form of “that’s the way it’s always been done around here.” Just because something worked under one set of circumstances doesn’t automatically mean it’s a best practice; or even a good practice. You must have situational fluency so you can understand the big picture and guide your customer toward the best possible solution, regardless of what standard convention says.
Here’s a real-world example that proves the benefits of questioning the status quo. Years ago The Independent, a British newspaper, considered switching from the traditional Broadsheet format, which uses large page sizes, to the “tabloid” format, where smaller pages are used.
Many thought that if The Independent switched formats, consumers would assume it had become a tabloid, and readership would plummet. But the paper made the switch anyway—and readership actually increased. Many other newspapers followed suit.
The Harvard Business Review researched this case and found that the status quo bias toward Broadsheet dated all the way back to 1712. The British government imposed a newspaper tax based on the number of pages. Larger pages meant fewer pages, so the format became popular. The tax was repealed in 1865, but the status quo lasted for centuries—and no one even asked why!
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