I was driving southeast to New Hope, PA yesterday with my GPS as my guide. I took a different way as my wife rolled her eyes in disgust. I didn’t want to go the way it suggested, I knew there was a better, more direct route. Then, we got lost. Damn.

But I know I was right. Trust your instincts – at least sometimes. We eventually crept into New Hope, losing perhaps a half hour of time and nursing a minor argument with my wife. From where we were, the stupid GPS demanded I head back north seven miles – 7 miles! – and continue on. I know we could have found alternate roads leading east that would take us directly there from where we were without going back to our starting point. Next time, I’ll map it out beforehand (my kids would just jump out of the car if I ever did that with them in the car).

I was in marketing for most of my career and if you’re gonna make it in marketing, you better question everything. Because your competitors sure are doing the same thing. Question the ad campaign, the packaging design, especially the intended audience. Does the product or service still address the needs of the customers? Especially with all those new competitors coming on the scene?

The worst phrase I heard over and over and over again in corporate life was, “But that’s not the way we do that here.”  Are you kidding me? You don’t want to challenge the status quo? You want to remain safe in your corporate world, sacrosanct in the belief that because the company is so big, it never needs to change, just needs to keep selling the same product? Market leader? Nice. Watch out, here comes Market Disrupter. Or here comes a new group of Early Adopters, customers who see something on the horizon that suddenly overturns every assumption about your brand and its qualities.

So next time you are in a meeting and the Finance guy or the Manufacturing woman says, “We don’t do that here,” get ready to dig in. Have your facts ready, research at your fingertips revealing that your customers in fact “do that there.” It’s not a contest between you and them – it’s a mindset that reminds everyone that the status quo isn’t always the best place to be.

Look how the U.S. auto industry got creamed by the Japanese auto industry in the 1970s. The Big Three – GM, Ford and Chrysler – basically ignored the slow but growing popularity of Toyotas, Datsuns and Hondas. Then the oil crisis hit, gas prices skyrocketed and Americans were questioning everything regarding their cars. The Big Three never fully recovered and 50 years later, they have redefined their automation, HR and design processes to become a lot more competitive. 50 years, that’s a lot of market dominance and sales lost.

That’s what they like to call a game-changer. However, if you are the leader, you want to be the one changing the game and calling the shots (leadership), not the one reacting to a major shift.

Sometimes you do question everything and change the formula and realize you screwed up. New Coke, anyone? But that was an exception. Look how the book publishing and the music publishing industries were caught flat-footed and turned upside down by Amazon and Apple iTunes, respectively. And how Elon Musk is forcing the auto industry to once again adapt, this time to a world of EVs.

I remember when I worked at National Distillers in the mid 1970s. I was a Marketing Analyst charged with monitoring industry data to track sales of key products in the liquor and wine industry. One big trend we were watching was a large blip in the data that showed liquor sales were declining – as well as our competitors – and the wine market was beginning to really take off. Certain executives and Brand Managers passed it off by saying, “it’s just a fad.” Oops. It wasn’t a fad and the demand for white and red wines exploded as Americans began to shift to a “healthier” alternative to vodka, gin and whiskey. National Distillers, a Fortune 500 company, was broken up and sold a few years later, a victim of LBOs and ignoring market trends.

Question everything. Howard Schultz sure did. Starbucks was started in 1971 by three businessmen and entrepreneurs and in the 1980s, they sold the business to Schultz who transformed the company into a world leader through “an aggressive expansion of the franchise first in Seattle, then across the West Coast of the U.S.” according to Wikipedia. After checking out espresso based coffees in Milan, Italy, Schultz tore apart the Starbucks concept and revamped it into today’s niche of upscale coffees and foods.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates questioned everything and changed the computer market from mainframes and minicomputers produced by companies such as IBM to laying the groundwork for the personal computer market in the 1970s. IBM itself was smart enough to question everything by getting out of the PC business (it was on its way to becoming a commodity business) and instead using its expertise and leveraging its brand name to become a high tech consulting company and later, a leading cloud computing company.

It is not only companies that question everything; it’s also individuals. Einstein, through his thought experiments and his genius produced his theories of relativity, light and gravity. Churchill questioned how Hitler was going to defeat Great Britain when they enjoyed the buffer of the English Channel. He was a student of history of the great European wars of the previous 1,000 years and outflanked the Germans enough until the U.S. finally declared war after Pearl Harbor. Walt Disney knew that animation could become a respected art form in the emerging film industry of the 1920s. Through trial and error and hiring the best and brightest animators, Walt Disney went on to produce a highly respected and beloved art form.

It’s tough to question everything; we hear the phrase “market disruptor” thrown around in so many business articles. Status quo is easy, it’s cheaper since you don’t need to retool, research or reexamine. Just repeat. Questioning leads to change and that can be expensive. It is why we all resist change, it’s just easier to keep on keeping on, doing the same old same old. Buying a new wardrobe can be expensive but how many skinny jeans are now in your closet? Do you still wear “relaxed fit” jeans? How about flare bell bottoms? Wide floral ties?

So yes, you can stand still or you can at least pick and choose the change that is best for you. Don’t just stand there, question everything!

Chris Ebel
11/1/21

Photo credit: @brainloc