20 excuses to abolish from your company’s vocabulary

If your company is averse to new ideas or strategies, some of these phrases might sound familiar.

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In their book, “How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things,” co-authors Neil Smith and Patricia O’Connell list 20 common excuses companies give for why they don’t consider new business transformation ideas.

Smith and O’Connell recommend you eliminate these 20 excuses from your company’s vocabulary:

1. “Our company is well run; there are no opportunities.”

2. “We’re inefficient, but my department is not the problem.”

3. “The issue is support function and allocations, not my costs.”

4. “Our problem is revenue, not how we do things.”

5. “We’ve tried that before.”

6. “We already do that.”

7. “My boss/CEO/legal will never agree to that.”

8. “That won’t save money or increase revenue.”

9. “That would cost too much to implement.”

10. “No one in the industry is doing that.”

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