The death of convention

Permit me to preach in this, here, post on things conformity, courtesy and tradition (yes, very Lin-Manuel Miranda of me to write in this way). It seems to me that one of the things we see in the 'new normal' is an almost-disdain for protocol. From the union of Harry and Meghan emerged heavy discourse on the need for aspects of the royal dynamic to change, especially in the light of mental health concerns. Over on the business side, we've seen pushback against statements from powerful individuals such as Jamie Dimon and, lately, Elon Musk that seem to denounce remote work. There is always an ethos of an age and the one that presides over this one has a lot to do with giving the individual, whether at home or at work, greater autonomy. And rightly so. Many people have suffered in silence, been discriminated against and, sometimes, even died to maintain the status quo. Princess Diana is a case in point and one can completely understand the Duke of Sussex for doing everything possible, even if it meant challenging the very system that raised him, to protect his new family from the intense scrutiny and, ultimately, the fate of his mother.

My contention, however, is when we have a strictly 'out with the old, in with the new' mentality about change. This can be likened to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, at times. When we think about strategy management, the balanced scorecard is one of my favourite tools to help depict some of the internal elements at play. We have the 'business-as-usual' elements which are framed by our Measures and help us to track our performance on a routine basis; and we also have our Initiatives or projects which are fixed-term activities that we develop and pursue to help us meet our Objectives. Now imagine if a business became pre-occupied with its Initiatives and stopped focusing on its Measures? What if one of these Measures was the Client Satisfaction Rate? Suppose this measure was something the organization used to measure monthly and it basically stopped doing this for a number of years: if satisfaction rates were progressively going down over time, and there was nobody tracking this, there would also be no opportunity to create remedies for the situation. One day, one might have just woken up to find a business, virtually, without customers.

This is not to say that there are not times that a complete overhaul is needed. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the 'handshake' was found to be one of, if not the biggest potential facilitators of virus transmission from person to person. Almost automatically, people, all over the world, were able to take a hygiene-first against decorum-first mentality when it came to greeting each other and different modes were used to acknowledge one another instead. Even as the pandemic wanes and many people have maintained a hygiene-focused lens in refraining from the handshake, it is still quite debatable what the fate of this form of greeting will be. Needless to say, it is important to evaluate and anticipate what potential repercussions some of our absolute views may have on our way of life in the long run. Many businesses are, in fact, struggling with the 'remote work' question; however, it is quite likely that many leaders will not want to speak out about the demerits of it and risk appearing unprogressive. At best, memes may be shared about a security guard calling to express that he/she is going to be working from home today. This, of course, could be no joke at all and totally plausible in areas where the most high-tech of security systems are in place and only need to be monitored remotely. The question now is - how many people or businesses can actually afford that?

The sticking point for me is the potential effect of glorifying nonconformist behaviour over standard conventions. We see, today, the culture of 'ghosting' creeping into the workplace, where professionals and businesses may simply cease communication for one reason or another, in situations that, otherwise, should have called for a feedback loop. It could be a business recruiting for a role, choosing its preferred candidate and not closing the loop with the other contenders, or, it could be an interviewee, leaving one corporate hanging because of a decision to go with a better offer elsewhere. It could be two professionals, in talks for a business project, and one 'ghosting' the other at a certain stage in the process. One might wonder if the growing desire and sentiment for more autonomy might not be inadvertently creating negative externalities in other areas of our lives. 'At the end of the day, if I have full liberty to respond howsoever I choose, I choose to not respond to Mary because I am no longer interested in the deal. She should get the picture'. However, Mary might not get the picture and a prizing of indirect over direct communication can sometimes lead to needless tension and conflict.

The crux of the matter is that we must take the time to properly assess where both tradition and novelty should sit. After all, it is 'business-as-usual' that keeps the wheels turning.