From the film Babe
The scene: Christmas day on the farm. The pig, the cow, hens, and Ferdinand the duck crowd by the kitchen window, craning their necks to see which unfortunate one of their kind has been chosen to become the main course at dinner. On the plate is Roseanna the duck dressed with sauce l’orange.
Ferdinand, the Duck: Why Roseanna? She had such a beautiful nature. I can’t take it anymore! It is too much for a duck. It eats away at the soul.
Cow: The only way to find happiness is to accept that the way things are is the way things are.
Ferdinand: The way things are stinks!
I was thinking about the above scene and how often it is played out in real life as leaders of businesses accept the status quo and are reluctant to change or look for alternatives to running their businesses. Some leaders may feel the way things are stinks, but aside from expressing anger and frustration they can’t or won’t do much else.
The book, The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander, evaluates this scene as it relates to the acceptance or denial of “Possibility” and encourages an alternative “to initiate a new approach to current conditions, based on uncommon assumptions about the nature of the world.”
The Zanders suggest that the Cow’s acceptance attitude and the Duck’s accepting but complaining attitude are not the only choices available. They suggest that a third and more realistic attitude exists. From my experience as an executive, entrepreneur, and executive coach, I’ve come to appreciate that we can parallel this concept to business, and it is precisely this attitude that should exist in every company and business leader. Let me explain.
This alternative attitude says that while you understand the way things are you ask yourself if there are there other ways that things could be, or is the way things are the only way. In other words, focus on a solution, a better way, instead of the problem. The problem belongs to the “issues” and yesterday. A keen eye on a desired future state and the solution is what will separate us from the rest of the herd. I think the Cow would’ve been better served, in the long run, with this attitude. No pun intended.
A Case in point
A client we worked with was experiencing high attrition in their customer service department. This had been going on for some time, but when I asked about this problem, the client felt that it was the nature of the job and that all his competitors were experiencing the same rate of turnover, some even greater than theirs. It was the way things are, and like Ferdinand, the duck, they felt that it stinks, but could do nothing to change it.
After a series of individual and team coaching sessions focusing on the desired outcome (a fantastic future state), rather than the problems, the client and team gained a different perspective of the situation. Instead of focusing on what needs fixing, they began to envision what success looks like for themselves, in support of company goals. This gave rise to new awareness.
What did success look like for this client?
- The customer service department wanted to feel like a team, not several cliques within a team.
- They wanted to feel they were making a difference.
- Enjoy their work environment.
- Be part of something bigger.
- A culture that truly valued their department.
- Opportunities for career growth.
- Last, but not least, the leadership wanted to see higher retention (they decided it was possible) and increased profits.
In a coaching capacity, we partnered with the client to identify individual and team experiments designed to move the needle in the right direction. Some of these included:
- Developed a profile of the job based on the success attributes of his best customer service reps.
- Recruited and hire against that profile.
- Introduced an onboarding training and process.
- Changed corporate and client-facing messaging around the job function.
- Leadership and team development functions.
- Revamped training and compensation packages.
Within months you could see the team began to exhibit a sense of ownership and pride. Within six months, the company’s attrition improved from 85% to less than 20%, with better than 80% of new hires still employed after 1 year. The recruiting costs sank to an all-time low, which carried to the bottom line. I’ll eventually write a full case study on this, but seemingly small changes in attitudes and actions ended up leading to significant improvements across the board.
The coaching process allowed the client to see what was already there, hiding in plain sight and that the way things are is not the only way things can be. Instead of accepting things as they are (the Cow) or accepting things, but being angry and frustrated (Ferdinand, the Duck) the client could deal with the way things are and make changes.
Isn’t this the attitude we look for in our leaders? Don’t we want to follow someone who is willing to look for another way? Don’t we admire a leader with a vision of what is possible despite the difficult times and the number of people who would accept things as being the way they are? Where there is a will, there is a way, right? If you are one of these leaders, or you work for one, count your blessings and then pass the duck l’orange. Bon Appetite!
Written by Nick Tubach, MBA, PCC
To find out how executive coaching can accelerate your professional and personal growth, let’s talk about what is possible. Contact Bridgeline Executive Coaching.
FAQs
What does it mean to combat the status quo as a business leader?
Combating the status quo as a leader means refusing to accept that the way things currently are is the only way they can be – and instead actively seeking alternative approaches, new perspectives, and better future states even when the current situation feels normal, inevitable, or widely accepted across your industry. The article distinguishes three attitudes leaders typically take: passive acceptance (assuming the current situation is simply the nature of things), frustrated acceptance (knowing things are not working but feeling powerless to change them), and a third, more productive stance that acknowledges the current reality while asking ‘is this the only way it could be?’ It is this third attitude – solution-focused, possibility-oriented, and grounded in a clear vision of a desired future state – that executive coaching is specifically designed to cultivate.
How does executive coaching help leaders break out of status quo thinking?
Executive coaching helps leaders break out of status quo thinking by shifting the focus of conversations from the problem and its history to a clearly defined, vivid picture of what success could look like – a future state that makes the current situation feel like a choice rather than a fixed reality. This shift in orientation is powerful because leaders who are stuck in status quo thinking tend to measure what is wrong with the present rather than what is possible in the future, which limits both their creativity and their willingness to take the risks that change requires. The article’s case study demonstrates this directly: a client experiencing 85% customer service attrition – widely accepted as ‘the nature of the job’ – reduced it to under 20% within six months once coaching redirected the team’s attention from what needed fixing to what success would actually look like.
What is the ‘Art of Possibility’ mindset and how does it apply to leadership?
The Art of Possibility – drawn from the book by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander – is a leadership mindset that involves initiating a new approach to current conditions based on assumptions about what is genuinely possible rather than accepting existing constraints as fixed or inevitable. Applied to business leadership, it means that when facing a persistent challenge – high turnover, stagnant growth, cultural dysfunction – the most effective leaders do not simply manage the problem or complain about it, but ask whether different assumptions about the situation might open up entirely different solutions. The article uses this framework to argue that executive coaching creates the structured space and challenging questions needed to shift leaders from problem-focused to possibility-focused thinking, which is where genuine organizational transformation begins.
Can executive coaching produce measurable business results, not just personal development?
Yes – and the article provides a concrete example to demonstrate this. A client experiencing 85% annual attrition in their customer service department – a rate they had normalized as industry-standard – worked through a coaching process focused on defining what success would look like rather than diagnosing what was wrong, and implemented a series of targeted experiments including a success-profile-based hiring process, structured onboarding, revamped training and compensation, and leadership development. Within six months, attrition dropped from 85% to under 20%, with more than 80% of new hires still employed after one year, and recruiting costs fell to an all-time low – results that flowed directly to the bottom line. This case illustrates how executive coaching’s impact is not limited to mindset shifts; when applied to real organizational challenges, it can produce significant, quantifiable business outcomes.
Why do so many leaders accept the status quo even when they know something needs to change?
The article identifies two common patterns that keep leaders stuck in the status quo even when they recognize something is not working: passive acceptance, where the leader genuinely believes the current situation is the nature of things and therefore sees no point in challenging it, and frustrated acceptance, where the leader knows things are wrong but feels that systemic forces – competitor practices, industry norms, organizational inertia – make meaningful change impossible. Both patterns are forms of learned helplessness that feel rational because they are often reinforced by the people and benchmarks around the leader – if everyone in your industry accepts 85% turnover as normal, it takes an intentional disruption of that assumption to see it differently. Executive coaching provides exactly that disruption, offering an outside perspective and structured inquiry that helps leaders see possibilities that are already present but invisible from inside the problem.
