The door was heavy, brass-plated, and clearly marked with a "PULL" sign in high-contrast Helvetica. I pushed it. I pushed it with the misplaced confidence of a man who believes he understands the fundamental laws of physics, only to have my shoulder absorb the full impact of my own stubborn momentum. It's a specific kind of ego, isn't it? To see a direct instruction and decide your internal narrative knows better. We do this in business every single day, but we call it "proprietary methodology" or "custom workflows" instead of "hitting a locked door because we refuse to read the sign."
We wrap ourselves in the comfort of the "custom" label like a lead blanket. It feels heavy, so we assume it must be protective. "Our business is too unique for off-the-shelf solutions," says the executive of a firm, while 45 people in the back room are manually entering data from one spreadsheet into another spreadsheet because someone in 2015 didn't trust the automated import. This isn't innovation. It's not a competitive advantage. It's just a collection of historical accidents, workarounds, and old concessions that have solidified into sacred, unquestioned rituals. We have mistaken the way we've always done it for the best way it can be done. It's a tragedy of inertia.
The Suffocating Layers of Beige Paint
I was talking to Wei S.K. the other day. Wei is a graffiti removal specialist who thinks more like an archaeologist than a maintenance worker. He spent 25 minutes explaining to me why you can't just use a high-pressure power washer on 19th-century limestone. He pointed to a patch of wall near a service alley where the stone looked bloated and sickly. "They've been painting over the tags on this wall for 35 years," he said, his voice sounding like sandpaper on silk. "Every time a kid sprays a name, the landlord adds a new layer of 'The Way We Do It' beige. Now the wall is 5 inches thicker than it was in 1985. The moisture can't get out. The stone is literally turning to dust behind the paint because it can't breathe. They think they're protecting the building, but they're just suffocating the structural integrity with layers of 'best practice' that stopped being best 15 years ago."
Inertia vs. Structural Integrity
Moisture trapped, integrity failing.
Restored airflow and strength.
The Sam Question: Why?
Most business processes are exactly like that wall. You have a new hire-let's call him Sam-who walks into the office on his first day. Sam is bright-eyed and hasn't yet been crushed by the weight of "that's just how we do it." He watches a veteran employee, someone who has been there for 25 years, perform the Tuesday morning ritual. The veteran prints the invoice verification report (105 pages of paper), walks it over to a manager's desk to have it physically signed in blue ink, walks back, scans the signed document, and then saves the PDF in a folder named 'Final_Scans_Signed_v2'.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about why we cling to these inefficiencies. Is it just laziness? No, it's more insidious than that. It's the "Special Snowflake" syndrome. If I admit that my process for managing accounts receivable or vetting a client is actually 95% identical to everyone else's, I have to admit that I'm not as special as I thought. I have to admit that my value isn't in the *way* I move data, but in the *decisions* I make with that data.
Our custom workflows are often just a museum of past mistakes we've forgotten how to fix.
- The Author (Reflecting on Inertia)
Confusing Plumbing for Liquid Gold
We confuse the plumbing for the water. If you're a factoring company, your value is in your capital, your risk assessment, and your relationships. It is not in the fact that you use a specific, convoluted manual entry system that takes 55 minutes longer than it should. Yet, we defend these inefficient pipes as if they were the liquid gold itself. We tell ourselves that the friction is part of the quality control. It's a lie we tell to justify the $575 we waste every week in lost productivity per employee.
Weekly Wasted Productivity (Per Employee)
When you look at companies that scale, they don't have "unique" processes for the sake of being unique. They have standardized, high-velocity systems that allow their humans to do human things. They don't want their best people spending 15 hours a week fighting with a legacy database that requires three different passwords and a sacrificial goat to log in. They want them talking to clients, spotting fraud, and growing the book.
The Transition is Psychological
This is where the transition to a modern, standardized platform becomes a psychological battle rather than a technical one. Moving to a system like WinFactor isn't just about getting better software; it's about an organizational confession. It's admitting that the "custom" hoops you've been jumping through are actually hurdles you built for yourself. It's about stripping off the 35 layers of beige paint to see if the brick underneath is still solid. It's terrifying because, once the friction is gone, you have no more excuses for standing still.
The Monument to Insecurity
I remember a time I tried to "customize" a simple CRM for a project. I spent 45 days building out these elaborate branching paths for every possible edge case. I thought I was being thorough. I thought I was building the ultimate tool. By the time I was done, the system was so complex that I was the only one who could use it, and even I hated it. It took 15 clicks to do something that should have taken 5. I had created a digital monument to my own insecurity. I was so afraid of missing a detail that I made the entire process invisible under the weight of its own architecture.
Wei S.K. told me that the hardest part of his job isn't removing the graffiti; it's convincing the owners to stop repainting it the same way. "You have to go back to the original surface," he said. "You have to trust that the architects who built this 125 years ago knew what they were doing with the airflow."
In business, the "architects" are the industry best practices that have been refined over decades. There is a reason standard workflows exist. They are the result of thousands of companies failing and succeeding and finding the most efficient path through the woods. When you deviate from that path, you should have a damn good reason. "Because we've always done it this way" is the opposite of a good reason. It's a confession of stagnation.
Standardization Creates Freedom
We often fear that standardization equals commoditization. We worry that if we use the same tools as our competitors, we will become indistinguishable from them. But the opposite is true. When everyone is struggling with the same inefficient, manual processes, they all look the same: slow, prone to error, and stressed. When you automate the mundane and standardize the structural, you create the space for your actual competitive advantages to shine. Your team has the energy to be creative, to be empathetic, and to be fast.
Speed
The ultimate differentiator.
Clarity
Efficiency reveals true advantage.
Focus
Energy moves to high-value tasks.
Speed is the ultimate differentiator in the modern market. If it takes you 45 minutes to onboard a new client because of your "unique" verification process, and it takes your competitor 5 minutes because they use a streamlined, automated platform, you aren't more thorough-you're just slower. And in a world where attention spans are measured in milliseconds, slow is synonymous with dead.
The Complexity Trap
Complexity is a tax we pay for the fear of being ordinary.
I caught myself the other day, staring at a workflow diagram I'd sketched out for a new project. It had loops. It had "if/then" statements that led back to the beginning. It was beautiful in its complexity, a real work of art. And then I remembered the door. I remembered the "PULL" sign and the dull ache in my shoulder. I looked at the diagram and realized I was just building another door to push against. I threw the sketch away and started with the simplest possible path. 5 steps instead of 25.
It felt wrong. It felt too easy. It felt like I wasn't working hard enough. And that is the trap. We correlate struggle with value. We think that if a process is difficult and "bespoke," it must be producing a better result. But the client doesn't care how much you struggled. They care about the result. They care about the fact that their funding landed in their account on time. They care about accuracy. They don't care about the blue ink on your 105-page report.
If you find yourself defending a process today, take a second to ask if you're defending the outcome or just the habit. Are you protecting the limestone, or are you just adding another layer of beige paint because you're afraid of what's underneath? The "Special Snowflake" myth is the most expensive thing you can own. It costs you time, it costs you talent, and it eventually costs you the very business you think you're protecting.
I still catch myself walking up to that brass-plated door. I still feel the urge to push. But now, I pause. I look for the sign. I look for the path of least resistance, not because I'm lazy, but because I've realized that the most "unique" thing I can do is actually be efficient enough to focus on the things that matter. Stop building monuments to your past mistakes. Strip back the layers. Let the brick breathe. You might find that the "standard" way of doing things is the only thing that actually gives you the freedom to be extraordinary.