Define the status quo before you f*** with it!

A really good friend of mine, the brilliant Kohlben Vodden (Founder of StoryScience and the man that actually managed to organise me enough to create our brand, tone of voice and positioning) said to me: “If you are setting out to f*ck the status quo, then don’t you think you should define what the ‘status quo’ is first?” And he was right (he often is, but don’t tell him that ha ha).

So here goes, this is what we believe the status quo is from the FTSQ perspective:

Albert Einstein is broadly credited with exclaiming “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” and we agree. But, I think it’s even simpler than that. The Cambridge Dictionary’s definition for ‘status quo’ is: “the present situation or condition”. And for me that sums it up perfectly.

Many of the people we talk to come to us because their business has plateaued, they’re either in a rut or there are barriers (known and unseeable) stopping them from progressing beyond their present situation. So, they aren’t necessarily failing, they just aren’t able to get past their present situation. They are spending a lot of time, energy, resource and money simply treading water and that isn’t any good for anyone.

So, for us the answer is quite elegant in it’s simplicity. It’s time to say “f*ck the status quo”, time to take a good hard look at your business, put it under a microscope so you can question everything, proposition, messaging, people, processes, culture and all the bits that make up your business and ask the following on each part:

  1. Is it broken and requires fixing?

  2. Is something missing and needs that gap filled?

  3. Is there untapped potential you’ve never seen before?

This may mean that some areas are left exactly how you found them, because they are working just fine (challenging the status quo is about challenging everything and not necessarily changing everything), but you might well uncover things you weren’t aware of at all.

So here’s my challenge to you. What one thing you can question about how you currently work today?