Question

The plant managers of ABC Corporation's five plants have met at a common location at 8:00 am every Monday morning for 20 years. The people serving as plant managers have changed several times during this period, but the meeting has not. Every Monday morning all five plant managers are seated around a conference table in the home office. It is not uncommon for the managers to have no pressing business to discuss and the meeting amounts to nothing more than a Monday morning coffee session. Not only is the meeting inconvenient, but it is also costly, time-consuming, and occasionally interferes with the work of the plant managers. Finally, one of the plant managers had had enough. He decided to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the meeting. When he presented it at a meeting of the plant managers, ABC's CEO and the other plant managers were shocked to learn that the company could have $50,000 if the managers met only when there was pressing business to discuss.

Discuss the following question:

How does this case illustrate the need to constantly review the status quo and ask "Why"?

Answer 1

The existing idea or affair or a pattern of work which is being followed by the people of the organization from a very long period of time does not necessarily be always effective, the status quo is the existing state of affairs pertaining to a predefined set of actions which has to be taken at a regular interval of time regardless of calculating its efficiency and effectiveness towards the organizational goals.

According to a recent survey from Harvard Business Review on how much managers and leaders ask their employees to challenge the status quo showed a very obvious result, a survey conducted in February, 2018 among 1,000 employees showed that nearly 42% said that they were asked by their managers or senior leader to challenge the status quo, 32% said, yes sometimes it happens 26% said it rarely happens that they are motivated by the leaders or managers to challenge the status quo while on the other hand 3% of the employees said that its always that they are said to challenge the status quo of the organization.

The managers and leaders are often afraid to the fact that with challenging the status quo of the organization there is a possibility that a change in management style can take place, while transformation in the working culture could force them to search for next big thing. While on the other they overlook the fact that a simple change in status quo can lead to recreating growth and will challenge the organization to push it further, to a next level.

Following status quo and never accepting a change in it can lead to organizational disasters like employees become reluctant to accountability as they assume the end results of their actions will be obvious in every situation, It creates a situation where there is no one to give directions, a clear direction is obvious i.e. to follow the status quo no matter what the prevailing situation demands. Sometimes status quo increases the unnecessary costs of the organization which can be simply avoided by just reviewing the need of the existing affairs.

Same happens with the above provided case study until and unless a manager feels that meeting should be scheduled only when there is a need for actual discussion no one feels to challenge the status quo.