Tradition is great.
It tells us what the expectations are. Whether that’s a report style, KPI, or the invite or food list for a holiday dinner.
It tells us what’s acceptable and not. Whether that’s table behavior or presentation style.
It tells us how to make a thing so that people accept it. Whether that’s a public statement or a website.
Tradition is not great (and may be horrible).
It ties us to expectations. Sometimes the old KPI doesn’t work (or never did) and sometimes Uncle Julie can get aggressive with politics or no one likes stuffing.
It becomes a default on what’s acceptable. Sometimes you need to stand out and upending the table (metaphorically) is the way to do that.
It makes new things ‘also rans’ so that hearing the comment and clicking through are more physical activity than mental event.
Like most things there is no one, singular, great answer. Tradition is great – when you need it – as a starting point, checklist, crutch when you can’t execute it with the flair you’d like to. But it’s also pretty lousy if you want to do something new and meaningful.
PS – Welcome to my finally launched, long overdue website. Yes, it needs a lot of work (like..pages for one), but it was time to get a proper blog back up and running. There’s no telling where this will go – but here’s to fingers crossed for something not traditional.
Photo by Jared Erondu on Unsplash