Trash The Template

We all know that feeling when we return to work after a well-served vacation.

The world looks slightly different. Problems that seemed intractable before, now have clear and obvious solutions. That presentation we’ve been wrestling with suddenly writes itself. There’s something about stepping away from our daily patterns that unlocks thinking we didn’t know we had.

So why do we never apply this insight to the way we run our businesses?

Most businesses operate like institutional versions of Groundhog Day. The same sales proposals get recycled, albeit with minor tweaks. The same email campaigns go out with predictable regularity. The same promotions appear like clockwork because, well, they work. Or at least they worked once, sometime in the past. Which in business terms apparently means they should work forever.

While some may call this kind of thing “strategy”, it’s actually more akin to organizational somnambulism.

The Trap of Proven Success

I’ve been teaching marketing at two business schools for many years. One thing you’ll never find any course syllabus is how success breeds failure in ways that are almost impossible to detect until it’s way too late. When something works, we naturally want to repeat it. When it works repeatedly, we systematize it. Before long, we’ve created an entire operation built around replicating past success. The problem is that markets don’t stand still while we perfect our systems. Customer expectations evolve. Competitors adapt. Technologies shift. What worked brilliantly in 2008 might be merely adequate in 2018, and might be the exact opposite of what we should be doing come 2028.

Consider Blockbuster’s late fees. In 2000, Blockbuster collected nearly $800 million in late fees, accounting for 16 percent of its revenue. The company was fantastically profitable for years, generating massive cashflow and appearing to prove the strength of their business model. Except they also created the exact customer pain point that Netflix exploited. Blockbuster’s most successful revenue stream ultimately funded their own destruction.

We can see this pattern everywhere once we start looking. The consultant who built their reputation on a particular methodology keeps applying it to increasingly unsuitable situations. The marketing team that cracked the code on email open rates five years ago, so still uses the same subject line formulas while wondering why response rates keep dropping.

The Dangerous Comfort of Templates

Sales proposals represent perhaps the purest form of this problem. Walk into any professional services firm and you’ll find proposals that are essentially Mad Libs versions of the same document. Change the client name, swap out some industry-specific terminology, adjust the pricing, and presto, another “customized” proposal. Where would we be without “Advanced Find and Replace…”, right?

The problem here is that such an approach misses the fundamental truth about how buying decisions actually happen. People don’t purchase features or services. They buy solutions to problems that keep them awake at night. They buy confidence that someone understands their specific situation. They buy relief from anxiety about making the wrong choice.

A template cannot possibly address any of this because templates, by definition, ignore what makes each situation unique. They optimize for the convenience of the seller, not the needs of the buyer. Which explains why so many “sure thing” deals mysteriously evaporate at the last minute.

The Science Behind Stuck Thinking

There’s actual neuroscience behind why breaking patterns produces better outcomes. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s research identified two distinct thinking systems: System 1 thinking (fast, automatic, and intuitive) and System 2 thinking (slower, more deliberate, and analytical). When we follow familiar routines, our brains engage System 1 thinking, which is efficient but limited in scope. New situations force us into System 2 thinking, which is slower but far more creative and adaptive.

This isn’t just psychology at the level of the individual. Organizations develop their own version of System 1 thinking through standard operating procedures, established workflows, and proven methodologies. Sure, these systems create efficiency, but they also create blindness to possibilities that don’t fit existing frameworks. The companies that consistently outperform their competitors have found ways to institutionalize System 2 thinking. They deliberately introduce friction into smooth processes, not to create inefficiency but to prevent the kind of mindless efficiency that misses opportunities.

Amazon’s famous disagree and commit principle serves exactly this function. It forces teams to articulate and defend their assumptions rather than defaulting to previous decisions. The goal isn’t to create conflict, but to ensure that decisions result from actual thinking rather than habit.

Beyond Database Segmentation

Email marketing provides another perfect example of institutionalized mediocrity. Most businesses segment their email databases using the most obvious criteria: age, industry, company size, geographic location, and then wonder why their carefully crafted messages generate lukewarm responses. The problem isn’t segmentation. The problem is that everyone segments email lists in the same way. When every software company sends industry-specific emails to healthcare prospects and manufacturing prospects, being industry-specific stops being differentiating. It becomes table stakes, not competitive advantage.

The firms getting extraordinary email conversion performance have moved beyond demographic segmentation to behavioral and psychographic segmentation. They’re grouping people based on how these audiences may think, not just what they do or where they work. This requires actually understanding customers as individuals rather than as data points. It means knowing whether someone prefers detailed analysis or executive summaries. Whether they’re motivated by cost savings or revenue growth. Whether they make decisions quickly or need extensive validation.

This kind of understanding cannot be achieved through surveys or analytics alone. It requires genuine curiosity about what makes customers tick. It requires marketing – real marketing.

The Promotion Trap

Perhaps nowhere is “template thinking” more obvious than in promotion-based execution. Walk down any main street and you’ll see the same offers repeated endlessly: “20% off”, “Buy one get one free”, loyalty points, early bird discounts. These promotions persist because they generate measurable short-term results. But they also train customers to expect discounts, erode brand value, and create a race to the bottom where the only differentiator becomes price. Worse, they completely ignore the psychological and emotional factors that actually drive purchasing decisions.

The most successful promotions don’t just offer better deals. They offer better understanding. They demonstrate insight into customer problems that competitors haven’t even noticed, let alone addressed.

Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign succeeded precisely because it violated every rule of promotional marketing. Instead of encouraging purchase, it discouraged it. Instead of focusing on product benefits, it focused on environmental responsibility. Instead of appealing to self-interest, it appealed to values.

The campaign worked because it acknowledged something Patagonia’s customers already believed but rarely heard from brands: that thoughtless consumption is problematic. By giving voice to this belief, Patagonia didn’t just sell jackets. They sold alignment with customer values, which turns out to be far more powerful than selling features or benefits.

Making Pattern Breaking Systematic

Our challenge today isn’t recognizing that patterns need breaking. It’s creating systems that break patterns without creating chaos. Random change isn’t helpful. Strategic pattern disruption is. This starts with regular audits of successful practices, not to eliminate them but to understand why (if?) they work and whether those reasons still apply. The question isn’t “Is this working?” The question is “Is this working as well as it could, and will it continue working as circumstances change?”

From experience, we’ve found one of the most effective approaches involves “assumption archaeology.” Teams excavate the buried assumptions underlying their current practices. They identify the original conditions that made those practices successful. Then they examine whether those conditions still exist. Often they discover that practices developed for previous markets or technologies are being applied to completely different situations. The solution isn’t necessarily to abandon successful practices, but to evolve them based on current rather than historical realities.

The Real Competitive Advantage

Businesses that systematically question their own success develop something their competitors cannot easily replicate: the ability to evolve before environmental changes forces evolution. They maintain what works while continuously improving what could work better. This requires a specific kind of organizational culture, one that values learning over being right, experimentation over certainty, and adaptation over consistency. It means celebrating intelligent failures as much as predictable successes.

Most importantly, it means recognizing that in rapidly changing markets, the greatest risk isn’t trying new approaches. It’s assuming approaches that worked in the past will automatically work in the future.

The organizations that understand this principle don’t just survive market disruptions. They create them. And that, ultimately, is the difference between leading markets and following them.

Your business, like yourself, needs regular breaks from routine to maintain peak performance. The question isn’t whether to break patterns. The question is whether you’ll break them deliberately, or wait for the market to break them for you.