You can’t delete the default

Every company has a default. It’s the set of things that happen when nobody is pushing in any particular direction. Usually, its the combined momentum of all the pushing you’ve been doing. There are times in a company where its useful to remove that default. You want to break habits because the standard way is no longer the way things should happen. If you get to this point you’ll need to remember, you can’t just delete a default.

You can try and delete a default. You can lay down the law that whatever the old way was, it’s not the way any more. You can insist that things are different now and you need to be doing things a different way. This might work for a little while. People will likely avoid the old patterns, especially when you’re looking. What usually ends up happening though is a new default forms. One that is a tiny step away from the old default such that it technically complies with the decree.

This behaviour can sounds malicious on the surface. It isn’t. Defaults arise because people like patterns. People like to have systems that they can work within and work to improve. The defaults arise because they are the settled state of all the moving pieces in your business. When your company is small, say half a dozen people, you’re all talking a lot and can be very explicit about what the default is going to be. Any new idea or momentum easily spreads between everyone. Multiply your headcount by ten and the defaults often arise out of compromise. Compromise in all the little interconnections that nobody has explicitly set out to manage.

If, as a manager or a founder, you see a default you don’t like, you need to find a way to replace it. Generally speaking, I would try keep your focus on the big defaults. How do people talk about the company? What, broadly, would people say no to because it’s not a fit? Big, identity level defaults that have a way of influencing all the others. These take deliberate focus and effort to change.

Sometimes the new ‘default’ comes nicely wrapped in a brand new product. Maybe its a pivot or maybe its adding something to an existing platform or set of products. In this case, new defaults come fairly naturally. The best way to wrap them us is to treat the new thing like an experiment. If you have existing products and revenue you aren’t going to shift all your resources overnight. For every Slack style ‘we we’re a games company and now we do chat’ there are hundreds of smaller shifts.

This ‘new product, new default’ shift is one of the simpler ones to make. You slowly push the new product more and more and slowly replace old patterns with new ones. You probably need to prepare for this path to be a slow one. By it’s nature, your new thing is new. It’s little, its different and people will likely need time to adjust. Again, you can probably assume nobody is malicious but people do get set in their ways.

To put out a concrete, but somewhat redacted, example here I am currently working on a shift like this. I’ve been working to launch and grow a software platform within a startup that has a history more in line with tech enabled services. The product is adjacent but different. How we sell, what we build and who its for all rhyme with our existing customers but are different enough that there’s a need to manage the shifting defaults.

Having this product be somewhat stand alone has let us launch without tearing down everything that was there before. We’ve now got a enough customers on board that we can start the process of turning what was initially an experiment into a set of new defaults.

If the idea of slowly shifting defaults makes you feel frustrated and impatient then the other option is a big-bang shift in identity. You might call it a pivot, you might call it a rebrand. There are plenty of names for the process of tearing things back and laying down something new.

This method is quicker. It is also riskier and requires a lot more focused effort. If you mess up a shift like this you risk losing all that was good about the old way and gaining none of the good from what’s new. There is also a very real possibility that you’ll fall into the trap of so many large companies and run a ‘internal rebrand’ that makes no difference to anyone except a small focus group who orchestrated the whole thing.

Real systematic change requires that everyone buys into the new world order. People either need to follow along blindly (the less appealing option) or understand deeply why the defaults and fabric of the business are shifting.

I have seen this kind of change work. Other that the suvivorship-bias laden stories from silicon valley these kinds of changes often pop up after hiring new senior leaders or finding new investors. That injection of ‘new’ can be enough of a catalyst to make these big changes possible. People, broadly speaking, have a fairly low tolerance for change for the sake of change. If they feel that’s what’s going on they’ll get frustrated.

Tie it to the narrative of new leaders or new investment and you’ll have an easier time bringing people with you. This applies to both internal and external perceptions. Really doing this well requires a shift in both. If you position yourself to customers as one thing and then deliver another, you’ll lose customers. If you position yourself to staff as one thing and sell another you’ll lose staff.

So much of keeping a startup alive and growing is setting the right expectations and delivering on them. As you grow, more and more of that delivery comes from your defaults. They exist out of necessity because people like to come to work and know they’re picking up from yesterday. You can change the defaults but whether it’s the slow burn of a new stealth product launch or the flash fire of reinventing yourself you need to remember, defaults get replaced they don’t get deleted.