The Most Expensive Sentence in Business

You start a new job. You’re fresh, curious, full of energy.

You ask a few questions — nothing major, just things that don’t quite make sense.

Why is that form still printed and signed, then scanned back in?

Why are the meetings always on a Tuesday, even though half the team works part-time?

Why does the process involve three different logins and an Excel sheet that lives on someone’s desktop?

People blink. Some hadn’t really thought about it. Some pause, consider it… and nod.

And then there are the ones who smile — kindly, but with a tired sort of sadness. Like they remember being you.

“It’s just how we do it,” someone says.

That sentence. It’s probably cost your company more time, energy, and money than anything else.

It looks harmless. It sounds practical. But it’s often a signal that people have stopped questioning the systems around them — even when those systems are slowing them down or making their jobs harder than they need to be.

Sometimes the thing that needs fixing isn’t broken. It’s just inefficient. Or outdated. Or built around a long-departed team member who once needed it that way.

And when those things get inherited over and over again, they become invisible. Embedded. Defended.

Because changing them means facing the possibility that we’ve all been wasting time. That we’ve been solving the wrong problems. That we’ve stopped thinking for ourselves.

That’s uncomfortable. But it’s also where progress begins.

At Think Wellbeing, we’ve found that the best leaders and teams are the ones who are willing to ask, out loud:

Does this still make sense?

Is this helping us — or just something we’re used to?

Sometimes the answers lead to small fixes. Sometimes they spark bigger conversations. Either way, they remind us that culture isn’t just about values on the wall — it’s about how people behave when something doesn’t quite make sense.

So next time you hear “It’s just how we do it,” pause.

Because the most expensive sentence in business is also the most powerful prompt for change.