If it ain’t broke

It sounds cute. Useful even. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

That makes sense. Why spend time and resources trying to change something that’s working?

And yet the phrase is a dangerous adherence to the status quo. It says nothing of how to make things better. It assumes that we all know, and we can all agree upon what “broken” means (and for whom).

When we think of all the complexities of our culture, our systems, our businesses, and our daily lives … the broken-fixed duality is a poor way to determine what we should do.

Let’s abandon “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Let’s embrace, “If we can make it better, let’s make it better.”