APX-VI-0058
“I overwrote the 'we've always done it this way' default and it stuck.”
'We've always done it this way' is the institution's version of victimhood — helpless to its own habits, blaming inertia. You refused it. You authored a new way against real resistance, and it took hold. That's leadership as authorship: writing a better default into a place that didn't want one. Keep your pen sharp.
Your Practice
- Name the old 'always done it this way' you overturned.
- Lock in the new way before resistance reasserts the old one.
- Credit the people who adopted it early. They co-authored the change.
- Find the next broken default. Authors don't stop at one chapter.
The Architects
“The most dangerous phrase a DP manager can use is 'We've always done it that way.'”
— Grace Hopper, Quoted in Computerworld, January 26, 1976 (interview by Esther Surden)