WE’RE SO CLOSE, WE MAY AS WELL CONTINUE
One of my jobs as a naval gunner during my NS days was that of a helmsman.
“Starboard 20!”, the captain bellows.
“Twenty of starboard, sir!”, I respond to confirm the order, that the steering wheel has indeed turned 20 degrees to the right.
Yet it takes several deliberate seconds for the ship to turn, unlike my Toyota Wish. The result of hydrodynamic resistance, centrifugal force, and Newton’s First Law of Motion — inertia.
Inertia is not just a concept in physics — it’s also an inherent risk in business operations. Too often, companies become complacent and unwieldy in their ways, having settled comfortably in doing things the way they always have.
This is where Continuity Plan Bias occurs. It’s pretty similar to Sunk Cost Fallacy, Status Quo Bias, and the Galápagos Syndrome, which I’ve been guilty of many times.
In 2005, the much-loved designers’ software, FreeHand, was bought over by Adobe and announced to be discontinued in the next two years. Like thousands of defiant, die-hard Freehanders, I refused to migrate to Adobe Illustrator. When the plug was finally pulled and the software became obsolete, it took me weeks and several lost jobs to finally learn a new software. That’s status quo bias, my friend.
In the 2010s, we had a nice set-up for print design and were milking every last drop of agency commissions from media publishers, and mark-ups from production. By then, there was already a Niagara of evidence that print was declining quickly. But with heavy investment in people and equipment, we believed we could still squeeze out healthy profits. It was only when a big client dropped us from a $14,000-monthly retainer that I realised that print was dead. That’s sunk cost fallacy.
Since 2020, an increasing number of video editors have switched from Adobe Premiere to DaVinci Resolve. Their reasons being that DaVinci Resolve was free-to-use, has better colour-grading capabilities, and employs a more efficient use of system resources. We, on the other hand, have been subscribers of the expensive Adobe Creative Cloud for over a decade, and rather stick to the devil we know. Last week, one of our animated videos crashed several times and took two days to render, before we managed to sort it out. Alas, we’re still on Adobe Premiere because we’re almost nearing completion of the animation video. That’s continuity plan bias in plain sight.
A quick Google-search presents several ways to combat continuity plan bias. Some strategies would be:
- Encouraging everyone to suggest new, innovative business ideas.
- Experimenting with a new product, service, or process.
- Seeking honest views of the business from outsiders.
Inertia, however, can be consistent, impenetrable and difficult to overcome. If you give it a chance, it will persist.
Sadly, it will take another weekend or two of computer crashes to overcome inertia. Until then, I shouldn’t be helming the wheel.
