Because it is, Doesn’t Mean it Should Be

Originally posted on Medium.

Professionally, in the past, I’ve been tasked with writing inspirational and motivational memos — you know, the kind that get employees absolutely giddy with excitement for annual appraisals or to finally submit that engagement survey that I spent weeks drafting. More recently, I’ve also had to write devastating company-wide emails, in empathetic prose, detailing mass furloughs and subsequent layoffs. I don’t always get it right, but, every once in a while, I crank out something that still resonates with me years later. In the past few weeks, I came upon such a note, which I wrote for an internal newsletter in 2015. Titled “Because it is, Doesn’t Mean it Should Be,” it, surprisingly, is relevant even in this unique time.

The thesis of the memo is that we should always aim to innovate, because anything can happen at any time — as 2020 has bitterly reminded us. The notion of maintaining the status quo, simply because it works, does nothing to prepare you for tumult and uncertainty, and can actually blind you to opportunity. Instead, we should embrace creative destruction, and be ready to discard our old modus operandi in favor of shaping something new.

I’ve almost always worked with startups, so I understand the challenge of navigating unpredictable and unclear situations, sometimes for years. I’ve learned that we need to get comfortable with ambiguity, and then learn to thrive in it. Projects get defunded or deprioritized; reorgs are always coming; the next round of funding can fall through. Big tech firms tend to calibrate their employees on how they handle these situations. This year has made it easy to see why. Businesses have to change every day; even industry behemoths must quickly switch gears when the proverbial wrench in their business plans is this invisible and out of control. In a year characterized by the unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented,” how much confidence can you really have in legacy “best practices” and “industry standards”? How can you use so-called “standards” to determine how your company will survive the next pandemic wave, economic crisis, or dare I say, president, in a year that has been anything but standard?

The ideas of “best practices” or “industry standards,” while practical, are irksome. What, exactly, are they, anyway? And for whom, exactly, are they best? Are they static, or do they change every month? Every year? Earlier in my career, I was consistently told that “best practices” were the reason that we “should” or “should not” do something. I recall vehemently debating this stance with people who had much more work experience than I. I felt, quite frankly, that I didn’t move into tech from big finance just to do what everyone else was doing. I didn’t want to just follow industry standards; I wanted to innovate and set new ones. After all, wasn’t that the point of working for a startup?

This may come as a surprise, but HR usually isn’t that interesting. In most industries, we are still considered the department of policy, compliance, payroll, and benefits. “Creative HR” is no more welcome than “creative accounting” — it’s an implicit liability. But in tech, HR professionals often get to be creative; we tear down conventional HR wisdom and build up a new HR canon. This is where I thrive, so imagine my frustration at being told that “this is how it is and will always be.” Or that my ideas are invalid, because someone, somewhere else, has already established XYZ for the industry, and therefore it’s also set in stone for my company. Or that my ideas are irrelevant because you can’t question a VP who has 25 years of industry experience.

All this is an introduction to a teeny article I wrote years ago. This very moment is ripe for innovation in every industry; it’s happening right now. We, as HR professionals, can have a deep and meaningful impact at this juncture. This is a time when we can challenge the status quo without being labeled “radical.” This is a time to encourage debate amongst your team(s) and engage with opinions wholly different from your own. This is a time to stop avoiding debate with your seniors for the sake of cohesion and to not settle for the sake of. I’m still learning to embrace uncertainty, and attempting to keep a “creative destruction“ mindset when looking for solutions. In a time of absolute obsolescence of best practices, the silver lining is that there has never been a better moment to reinvent. We have an opportunity to redefine HR and the workplace now; we don’t usually get this unless Twitter or Facebook has already made it trendy.

In any case, here is what I wrote 5ish years ago. Be kind. I was young(er) and had yet to develop my writing chops.

As you may have heard, the general consensus is that 2015 was a huge year. And we can only project that 2016 will be bigger. When an organization grows in the way we have this last year, best practices will (and ought to) come into question. Google, the dictionary of our generation, describes best practices as “professional procedures that are accepted or prescribed as being correct or most effective.” But, as we’ve learned, what is “most effective” changes, and it changes frequently and, often, drastically. Best practices, in my opinion, should always be fluid and agile. They need to be disrupted every so often, so we can break the mold and evolve. We should consider these changes progress, and accept them with broad minds, however small or seismic they may be. We should constantly and willingly put ourselves in a position to challenge the status quo. Everyone and every company, as we are today, is wholly different from what we were yesterday and will most definitely revolutionize into tomorrow. We are in a unique position that allows us not to follow standards, but to innovate them. So, when you realize the modus operandi is becoming a bit too stagnant, question it. Directly challenge it. Take steps to reinvent it. The “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” style doesn’t fly around here (try telling that to a bunch of engineers)!