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Not changing course is a decision
The checkout line
Picture a grocery store with six lanes open. Choosing a line gets a surprising amount of analysis: the shopper with coupons, the cashier who looks new or slow, the cart piled absurdly high. It is a bet on time, a wager that the version of the day with line A will finish sooner than the one with line B.
Then the line turns out to be slow, and the shopper stays in it anyway. Switching feels risky, because if the old line suddenly speeds up, the move will look like a mistake. But at every moment the choice is the same one: which line is best from here. Treating the current line as no decision at all leads to not changing course enough.
At work
The same thing happens at work. Strategic planning sessions tend to start when something is going wrong, and they focus on what is new. What gets left out is the option of continuing as is. Applying the same analysis to the strategies already in use, as if they were new decisions, puts that option on the table.
Why does staying put feel safer than switching?
Economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser named status quo bias in a 1988 paper. In their experiments, people given a choice among options chose disproportionately often whichever one was labeled as the current default. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky found in 1982 that a bad outcome after taking an action is judged as more regrettable than the same outcome after doing nothing. Both findings help explain why the current line, job, or plan gets less scrutiny than an alternative.
Why do banks use one line for many tellers?
A single shared line feeding several servers is called a pooled queue. It cuts the spread in waiting times, because no customer is stuck behind one unusually slow transaction while another teller sits idle. Queueing theory also shows that pooling lowers the average wait, since every server stays busy whenever anyone is waiting. The result is why airport security, banks, and many pharmacies use a single serpentine line.
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