“It’s just the way things are done in our industry”, it’s an easy justification to almost any non-productive practice. Be it why banks need to close their doors before their key target market (the 9 – 5 employed) can utilize their services or why Lawyers operate a burn them out mentality with the not so occasional overnight shift, when it would be more productive to have twice the number of lawyers working half as often (and you’d probably attract all the best ones if you did).

Sometimes the stupidest reasons for businesses start-ups to do anything is the exact reason they do it. “I can’t understand why my competitors do it this way so I’d better go ahead and copy them or I’ll look like I just don’t get it”.

Its also why insurance companies let you fill in big long forms online to get a quote only to deliver you to a page saying they can’t make an online quotation. But you should try their phone support (although it’s not open right now), but hey their computer intranet might have some super secret information not available to the website or they might just waste another 10 minutes of your life…

These examples are so common place we start to not even notice them anymore but it always makes me think of the classic Henry Ford Quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Sometimes we just need to change the rules of the game altogether.