When "That's How We've Always Done It" Becomes a Red Flag

In every science team I've been part of, there's a phrase I've learned to listen for. It rarely shows up in a strategic meeting or written into a protocol. It surfaces in casual conversations, in answers to honest questions, in moments when someone proposes a small improvement or suggestion and gets shut down.

The phrase is: "That's how we've always done it."

And when I hear it, I know something important. I know there's an opportunity to find a new way.

Why This Phrase Is a Red Flag

On the surface, "that's how we've always done it" sounds reasonable. It implies tradition, established methodology, and hard-earned process. In a field as rigorous as science, those things have value. Protocols exist for reasons. Methods get refined over time. Newer isn't automatically better.

But here's the problem: "that's how we've always done it" isn't actually an argument. It's a refusal to think. It treats the current way as inherently correct simply because it's current and established. It bypasses the question that science is supposed to ask of everything: is this still the best approach given what we now know?

When a leader uses this phrase to deflect a suggestion, they're telling you several things at once:

• The current way isn't being examined or defended on its merits

• The person bringing the suggestion isn't being taken seriously as a thinking contributor

• The team has stopped questioning its own practices

• Inertia has replaced reasoning as the basis for decisions

In a field built on questioning assumptions, that's a problem.

What Happens After the Phrase Lands

The cost isn't just the rejected idea. The cost is everything that doesn't get shared afterward.

When someone hears "that's how we've always done it" in response to a thoughtful suggestion, they don't just walk away with the immediate disappointment. They walk away having learned something about the team's culture. They learn that ideas aren't always welcome. They learn that the effort of thinking critically about how things work won't be addressed. They learn to stop bringing things forward.

Multiply that across a team and a year. How many ideas die quietly? How many improvements never get proposed? How many of your most curious, observant team members give up trying to make things better and either resign themselves to executing tasks or eventually leave for somewhere their thinking is wanted?

Those losses don't show up in performance reviews. They show up in the gap between what your team could be doing and what it actually does. They show up in disengagement, in the absence of innovation, in the steady decline of energy that nobody talks about because nobody quite knows what to call it.

A Story That Changed What I Believe About Speaking Up

Years ago, in an organization I worked for, a colleague and I noticed something about how our department was organized. The structure wasn't serving the work. People were duplicating effort in some areas and dropping things in others. The work load was drastically uneven. Communication paths were inefficient. The way roles were divided made certain kinds of collaboration unnecessarily difficult.

We weren't in management. We didn't have the authority to change anything. What we did have was direct experience with the consequences of the current configuration and ideas about how it could work better.

We brought our observations forward. Carefully, respectfully, with specifics. We didn't criticize anyone. We framed it as: here's what we're seeing, here's what we think might work better, what do you think?

Here's what we heard after, "that's how we've always done it." We heard other leaders in management ask clarifying questions. They asked the employees for feedback. We didn't get dismissed immediately nor did we get told the suggestion was outside the scope of the department. They thought about it seriously. And they made significant changes to how the department was configured.

Eight years later — long after I have moved on to other organizations — that configuration is still in place. The ideas had legs. They survived because certain members of the leadership team were willing to question how things had always been done.

What This Means If You're the One Hearing It

If you're in a position where you see things that could work better but don't have the authority to change them, here's what I've learned matters:

Bring specifics, not complaints.

"This process feels broken" is a complaint. "I've noticed that when we hand work from team A to team B, three specific things keep falling through, and I think it's because of X" is something that can be discussed.

Frame as curiosity, not criticism.

"Can I ask why we do it this way?" opens a door. "This is dumb, we should change it" closes one. The same observation can be delivered either way.

Find allies before you bring it forward.

One voice is easy to dismiss. Two or three colleagues independently sharing similar observations is much harder. My colleague and I succeeded partly because we were saying the same thing.

Document what you're seeing.

When you eventually bring forward a suggestion, having specific examples — incidents, outcomes, patterns — makes the conversation concrete instead of abstract.

Recognize when ideas don't land.

Sometimes the environment isn't receptive. If you've brought thoughtful suggestions forward multiple times and they've all been met with some version of "that's how we've always done it," you have information. Either keep working there knowing what you've learned, or recognize that your thinking deserves a different home. Or acknowledge that while the current way may not be the most efficient process, your idea simply may not fit into the current way projects are approached.

What This Means If You're the One Saying It

If you're in a leadership role and you hear yourself reaching for "that's how we've always done it" — pause.

Ask yourself honestly: am I responding this way because the current approach has been carefully examined and is genuinely the best fit? Or am I responding this way because considering a change feels like more work than I have energy for right now? Those are very different reasons, and only one of them is defensible.

Even if you ultimately decide the current way is right, the conversation matters. The person bringing the suggestion learns whether their thinking is valued. The team watches how you handle it. Your response is shaping culture whether you intend it to or not.

A better default response sounds like: "Tell me more about what you're seeing. What problem would this solve?" That doesn't commit you to changing anything. It just signals that the conversation is real. And gives you an opportunity to explain in greater detail, the decisions that are being made.

Science Should Know Better

Here's what gets me about "that's how we've always done it" in scientific settings specifically: our entire field is built on the opposite principle. Science asks questions. Science updates beliefs based on new evidence. Science values the willingness to be wrong because being wrong is how we get to being right.

A scientific team that defaults to "that's how we've always done it" in its own operations has stopped applying scientific thinking to itself. It treats the team's processes as somehow exempt from the questioning that the team applies to data, methodology, and hypotheses.

You can't be a rigorous scientist about your research and a defender of inertia about your team. The same disposition that makes you a good researcher should make you curious about whether the way you're currently operating is actually serving the work.

Eight years of unchanged structure in that department I worked with isn't evidence that the new configuration was perfect. It's evidence that someone was willing to ask whether the old way still made sense. That willingness — to question, to listen, to change — is what makes leadership in science different from leadership anywhere else.

When you hear "that's how we've always done it," don't accept it as an answer. It's a question waiting to be asked.

— Chris Payne

Founder, Dirigo Science Connection