Just Because We’ve Always Done It That Way Doesn’t Mean It Makes Sense

By Krista Stalcup, MBA

Some companies don’t have a process problem. They have a leadership problem nobody wants to talk about.

Employees know what’s broken. They’ve probably mentioned it more than once. Nothing changes. So they figure out how to get the job done anyway.

Then leadership looks at the results and thinks everything is working.

Really? Just because your employees are making it work doesn’t mean your process works. Sometimes it means you’ve got good people cleaning up problems they didn’t create.

And I’ve always wondered why companies are so quick to hold employees accountable for results but not nearly as quick to question the systems those employees are expected to work within.

When did doing things the hard way become normal?

Have you ever walked into a company, looked at how something was being done, and thought, Who came up with this, and why are we still doing it?

You ask a reasonable question. “Why do we do it this way?” And somebody says, “Because that’s how we’ve always done it.”

Well, that explains absolutely nothing.

I’ve worked across sales, marketing, operations, and workforce development. Different industries, different teams, different challenges. But one thing I’ve learned is that broken processes don’t always look broken from the top. They look like employees working harder than they should have to.

Someone creates another spreadsheet because the system doesn’t give them what they need. Someone spends half their day tracking down information that should have been available in the first place. Someone else becomes the person everybody calls because they’re the only one who knows how to get something approved.

Eventually, the company starts depending on those people to keep everything moving. And because they’re good at their jobs, they do. Until they can’t.

Good results don’t always mean good operations

This is where I think leadership needs to pay closer attention.

I’ve led teams responsible for measurable outcomes, including placement performance, employer relationships, revenue growth, and coordination across multiple locations. When you’re responsible for results, you can’t just look at whether the target was met. You have to understand what it took to get there.

At Southern Technical College, improving placement outcomes meant looking beyond the final numbers. Employer relationships, student preparation, externships, communication, and follow-through all affected the outcome. If one part wasn’t working, asking the team to make more calls wasn’t necessarily going to fix it. You had to figure out where things were getting stuck, who was responsible for the next step, and what needed to change.

That’s the difference between managing a number and leading an operation.

I’ve seen what happens when employees spend more time trying to get around a problem than doing the work they were hired to do. And I’ve never understood why leadership would rather keep having the same conversation about performance than address what’s causing the problem.

Accountability goes both ways

I’m a big believer in accountability. If you’re responsible for something, you should own it. But that includes leadership.

You can’t expect employees to consistently deliver results while ignoring the problems preventing them from doing their jobs effectively.

If information isn’t moving between departments, find out why. If approvals take too long, look at who has the authority to make decisions. If employees are entering the same information in three different places, ask whether all three are actually necessary.

And if the same problem keeps showing up month after month, maybe another meeting about it isn’t the answer.

I know. Shocking.

Sometimes the issue isn’t that people aren’t working hard enough. It’s that nobody has taken responsibility for fixing what’s making their jobs harder.

What I actually do when something isn’t working

I don’t believe in changing things just to say we changed them. And I certainly don’t believe every problem requires a new platform, another consultant, or a six-month project.

I start by asking questions. I want to talk to the people doing the work, not just the people receiving the reports. I want to see where the delays happen, what information is missing, and which steps create more work than value.

Then I look at what we can actually control.

Can we remove an unnecessary step? Can we clarify who owns the next decision? Can two departments agree on what a completed handoff should look like? Can we measure whether the change actually improved anything?

And most importantly, can employees follow the process without needing to find some creative way around it?

Because if the solution only works when one particular employee is there to hold everything together, we haven’t really solved the problem. We’ve just made that employee indispensable. And probably exhausted.

The conversations leaders need to be willing to have

One thing I’ve learned about leadership is that people won’t always tell you what you want to hear. Sometimes they’re going to tell you something you don’t like.

Maybe a process you approved isn’t working. Maybe two departments aren’t communicating. Maybe the way responsibilities were assigned made sense three years ago but doesn’t make sense today.

That’s not necessarily criticism. That’s information.

And I’d rather have someone tell me what’s wrong while we can still fix it than have everybody smile in a meeting and complain about it afterward.

Employees shouldn’t have to choose between being honest and being considered a team player. A good leader should want to know where things aren’t working. Not so they can find someone to blame. So they can do something about it.

Stop confusing employees making it work with a process that works

There will always be unexpected problems in business. Good employees will find creative ways to solve them. That’s part of what makes them valuable.

But when the same problem keeps coming back, the solution shouldn’t be to keep relying on those employees to save the day.

At some point, leadership has to ask why the problem is still there. And if the answer is, “That’s how we’ve always done it,” maybe that’s exactly where we need to start.

Because your best employees shouldn’t have to spend their careers fixing the same problems leadership refuses to address.

And if you’re a leader who wants to know whether your operation is actually working, here’s a question worth asking: What would fall apart tomorrow if the person who always figures everything out wasn’t there?

The answer might surprise you. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe everybody already knows. They’ve just been waiting for someone to do something about it.

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About the Author

Krista Stalcup, MBA, is an executive leader whose experience spans sales and marketing, workforce development, organizational improvement, strategic partnerships, and multi-location operations. Her leadership approach focuses on understanding what’s actually happening inside an organization, improving how teams work together, and turning business goals into measurable results.