Challenging the status quo is about as inspirational as penguins walking on the beach.

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/slideshow/225879#2
^^^Oh yeah, thatâs a thing.
Today, a call to challenge the status quo seems tired and played outâŚand honestly, what does it even look like?
Does challenging the status quo mean becoming an anti-establishment rebel? Or constantly pointing out the flaws in your organization? Or being the manager who âzigsâ when everyone else âzagsâ?
Maybe so.
But what if challenging the status quo was something far more positive than negativeâŚ
…more exciting than intimidating?
All while actually being possible?
In this post, youâll learn exactly:
- Whatâs at stake for you and your company if you donât challenge the status quo.
- How to specifically identify your status quo and its impact in your organization.
- And a novel way to approach leading positive change in any context.
Before you dive in, grab your free âChallenging The Status Quo Worksheetâ so you can pinpoint the negative impact of status quo in your team, marketing, or organization as a whole.
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To begin, letâs look at what your new life as a marketing leader can look like if challenging the status quo becomes a staple in your life.
The Positive Results Of Challenging The Status Quo
Right now, your Monday mornings might be packed with frustration, because your team is never on the same page, and no amount of communication seems to help.
Anxiety may be constantly nipping at your heels because youâre worried your team will miss deadlines yet again. And your boss (or your bossâs boss) will be breathing down your neck, hawkishly watching for you to mess up, yet again.
Youâre stuck in reactive bursts, solving emergencies rather than steadily gaining ground on your quarterly KPIs.
Not a fun way to live.
Now, imagine if your Monday mornings became strangely (and wonderfully) different. What if they could look like this, instead?
You roll into the office, sit down at your desk with a cup of coffee or tea, and dive into the week with purpose and energy.
Your inbox isnât flooded with questions like, âWhere are we at with this project?â Instead, you have confirmations noting, âBrittany completed Y task.â
Youâre still riding high from last Friday afternoon, when you left the office after hitting every deadline for the week. Better still, you have complete confidence you and your team are heading for 100% completion across the board.
There are a few fires that have sparked over the weekend that you need to snuff out (this is life, after all). But, happily, you have margin in your day to deal with emergencies.
Instead of teetering on the brink of burnout, you actually got rest and unplugged over the weekend. Mondays are fun again because you arenât filled with dread.
The snooze button may as well not exist because you arenât lying awake at night, mind racing about *that* project thatâs gone off the rails.
Best of all, you have the full trust of your boss and your team. They know you can lead them â and you even know you can lead yourself.
You arenât staring on with envy at all those other world-class marketers who get newsworthy results.
Why?
Because you are one of them.
Can Challenging The Status Quo Really Get You Results?
Now, you may be rolling your eyes and calling B.S. on this new normal Iâm describing.
And while our workload as marketers is an average 72 hours per week and the load on our plates isnât trending to get smaller, much of the above can in fact be realized.
To start, your belief in both your position and your ability to lead change against the way things are is key.
As a 2014 study published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology found: âto challenge the status quo should imply a strong belief in oneâs position as the correct one...â
This begins by clarifying a simple misconception about what the status quo actually is.
We generally use status quo as a fancy-sounding way to describe the current state of affairs in a given context.
However, if youâll travel back to my freshman Latin class with me for some quick etymology, thereâs something helpful for us to understand.
What Is The Status Quo?
Status quo is a Latin phrase that means âstate in which.â So we could rephrase it as: your status quo is âthe state in which [your current outcomes/results happen].â
[*As a quick side note:* Iâd like to point out that my knowledge of a dead language has now proven professionally useful for the first time ever.]
This means status quo actually describes the outcome the current state of affairs creates. This means status quo is best understood as a way of outlining the outputs generated by current inputs.
So, to define the real status quo, itâs helpful to organize it into a statement structured like this:
âOur current status quo is the state in which [current outcome] occurs is the result of [description of inputs].â
For example: âThe state in which [habitually missing deadlines] occurs is the result of [poor organization, unclear team priorities, and ineffective communication].â
This way, rather being a nebulous term packed with negativity, it becomes an empowering exercise.
This is because when you understand the causal relationships between our inputs and outputs, you can actually affect change.
This is where your âChallenging The Status Quoâ worksheet comes in handy.
The first exercise is to find your status quo in a specific area. This is the current outcome you want to change, described in the actions, behaviors, or conditions that are creating it.
So answer these questions:
- What is my teamâs primary obstacle to growth?
- How are its negative outcomes succinctly described?
- What behaviors or conditions are causing these outcomes?
Then complete your status quo statement by focusing on one primary outcome. This is the proverbial âOne Thingâ rather than trying to boil the ocean.
Once youâve outlined your current âstate in which,â you have the power to pinpoint plans for change.
The Risk Of The Status Quo (AKA: Doing Nothing)
Now, challenging the status quo might feel riskyâbut it itâs likely far safer than staying the same.
Did you know that maintaining the status quo will actually kill you faster than taking risks?
We live in a âchange or dieâ world. Marketing is exactly this way. And this is more than my anecdotal opinion.
According to Kotter International: The ârate at which our world is changing is increasing, but our ability to keep up with it is not.â
This plays true across every verticalâmeaning marketing in every industry is included.
But the deception is that doesnât feel like a risk to do the same things each week, does it?
How much risk is entailed in going to the same meetings? Generating the same reports? Running the same types of campaigns?
If youâve always done it this way, it must be safe.
This is a flawed assumption. And it comes from underestimating the risk of the status quo.
A landmark article by Roger Martin, dean and professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School, outlines the titanic costs that accompany maintaining the status quo.
Though heâs tackling the disastrous economic impact status-quo maintaining Canadian companies face, the principles are portable for our companies and teams as marketers.
Martin explains:
âThe logic seems to be that, âsince we are already doing what we are doing, it canât be terribly risky.â This, unfortunately, is a very flawed assumption.â
Our Achilles heel is that we see something new as inherently risky, while something familiar is deemed safe. That the risk of doing nothing is greater than taking on something new.
However, with the rate of change in marketing only accelerating, maintaining status quo is risky business.
This brings us to the second exercise in your âChallenging The Status Quo Worksheet,â defining the risk of your current status quo.
Define the risk of your current status quo. What bad things might happen if things donât change?
You will answer this question in two ways.
First, youâre outlining the risk of status quo for your team. Second, youâre being specific about the risk maintaining the status quo poses to you as the leader.
For marketing leaders, this exercise should create urgency in us.
Challenging the status quo actually means an honest evaluation of current results and the actions that have created them.
This is far more than touting change for changeâs sake.
The Psychological Basis For Changing Your Status Quo
When we talk about the dynamics of change on any front â personal or organizational â weâre talking about modifying behaviors to impact results.
While there are mega mindset shifts that need to take place, the real work is in changing behavior. Because knowledge does not equal change.
If it did, we could change the world with a quick Google search. And millions of people would suddenly realize...
âOh, wow! All I need to do to lose weight is eat healthier and exercise!â
â Problem solved.
âSmoking seems really bad for me. Iâm sure glad I learned that. I guess Iâll quit.
â Poof...bad habit overcome.
âOur team keeps missing our KPI targets because we havenât hit a deadline in weeks. Itâs so simple, letâs just hit our deadlines!â
â Results skyrocket. Youâre instantly promoted.
Obviously it doesnât work like this.
Just because we know the right things doesnât mean we do the right things. The same holds true for individuals and teams alike.
This means challenging the status quo will mean more than head knowledge.
Itâll mean different actions than those that created todayâs state of affairs. And this is precisely where your value and leverage enters the picture.
Rather than being a peanut-gallery naysayer, youâre an internal engineer, building solutions to solve systemic problems (no matter how big or small).
How To Lead Solution-Focused Change
Sure, there are deeper forces at work that influence our organizations⌠But this is a shortcut to faster results in the near future, rather than a months-long (or even years-long) battle to change the fabric of your company.
This isnât an exercise in, âHow do we dredge up the slimy mess of whatâs broken?â
Itâs a simple exercise in answering, âWhat actions, no matter how small, can lead to positive change right now?â
This approach is well-supported by the psychological method called Solution-Focused Brief Therapy. The primary principle is to concentrate on finding solutions right now and mapping a quicker path to positive results.
The main question these psychologists ask is:Â âIf a miracle occurred while you were asleep tonight, what changes would you notice in your life tomorrow?â
Weâll adapt it for our marketing context:Â âIf a miracle occurred while you were asleep tonight, what small changes would you notice in your team tomorrow?â
Go to section three in your âChallenging The Status Quo Worksheetâ and answer this question with as much detail as you can.
You will use the specific status quo outcome you identified in the first exercise.
So, if we continue with the missed deadlines example, the small changes you might notice are:
- My team would be sending me progress updates rather than begging for extensions.
- I would see notifications in my CoSchedule dashboard that tasks have been completed on time.
- My team would be clear on their priorities and finish the most important work first.
The Point Of Challenging The Status Quo In Your Specific Context
The main reason of challenging the status quo in such a surgical way has two parts.
First, it helps you quickly pinpoint the actions that are generating the current results you want to change.
For instance, if one of your teamâs most important KPIs is qualified leads (which a study we conducted found is the main KPI pro marketers track), then you can reverse-engineer this poor outcome to its causes.
Note, that these arenât always giant, earth-shattering things, either.
For instance, I work closely with our sales team to connect them with the best possible leads for CoSchedule.
While we were working to optimize a specific tactic, we found out that the code had gotten wonky.
This meant the process wasnât working like it should, so people who were super interested in getting a demo of CoSchedule to save them the time of figuring out the platform in a trial were falling offâŚ
...not because our copy was bad, but because the mechanism wasnât working.
After reducing the friction of poor user experience, âVoila!â Awesome marketers took the positive action we were inviting them to.
Understand, then, that your status quo describes current results. And that your current results are driven by your current actions and behaviors.
Pinpoint the sticky spots. Then map out a plan to fix them. Youâll likely find some easy wins that can make a huge impact along the way.
Suddenly, the behemoth of âchallenging the status quoâ can get cut down to size.
Second, it makes you a more effective, confident, and visibly successful leader.
The leader who gets results is the leader who gets promoted. And new results come from new behaviors. Period.
Not only will turning negative outcomes into positive wins make you look like a marketing genius, it will also give you crazy, Kanye-esque confidence.
Scientifically stated: confidence is "the degree to which you think and âfeelâ your actions will achieve positive results."
When you make wins happen, you know youâll be able to do it again⌠and again⌠and again.
The Crux Of A Toxic Marketing Status Quo: Makeshift Marketing
At CoSchedule, we talk with millions of marketers each year. And through these experiences, weâve identified the primary creator of a negative marketing status quoâŚ
We call it makeshift marketingâand itâs the hidden cause of myriad issues.
The modern marketing stack makes staying organized hard. And the reality is that todayâs marketing landscape is flooded with single-function tools.
Marketers are log jammed with planning tools, social stack, tools for content marketing, and then productivity tools that manage her team. And, none of them play well together.
What this means is many of the teams we talk to end up adopting a variety of tools just to get their work done.
Theyâll use one tool for social, and another for task management, and then before they know it they end up adding a spreadsheet to the mix to TRY and tie it all togetherâŚ
Often, it ends up looking like this:
^^^ yes, those are actual pics marketers have sent us over the years.
The result is a status quo that results in:
- Extreme frustration that your team canât stay on the same page,
- Uncertainty about where projects are at,
- Lack of visibility into all of your marketing,
- Distrust and doubt in your teamâs (and your own) ability to get the results youâre on the hook for,
- And honestly, lackluster results even though you know youâre capable of more.
For thousands of marketers, then, a major step in challenging the status quo is getting everything (and I mean everything) organized in one place.
Itâs that wonderful Monday-morning transformation described at the beginning.
Now hereâs some fantastic news⌠You can plot a path to beat makeshift marketing and its rotten results in 30 minutes or less. And thereâs a 99% chance you can do so today!
Schedule a personalized, 1-on-1 demo and discovery with a CoSchedule expert to challenge and overcome the negative status quo impacts of makeshift marketing.
Get Started Challenging The Status Quo
Now, if you havenât already, take just 15 minutes and follow the three steps in the âChallenging Your Status Quo Worksheet.â
The clarity this simple exercise brings will increase give you confidence that you can change the status quo in your organization. And it will help you focus on exactly what steps to take today.