The Strange Reason Why Teams Stop Questioning Bad Processes

Five monkeys, some bananas and why people stop thinking and follow blindly

I was in a meeting a few years ago where a clunky process requiring no less than three levels of approval for a simple action was being discussed. The process was slow, frustrating to team members and far from customer centric.

Being relatively new to my role, I simply asked, “Why do we still do it this way?”

I didn’t intend it to be a loaded question, and I genuinely thought it would be easy to answer. I was just curious as to why a particular action required so many sign offs.

The room changed in an instant, as though I’d asked something deeply personal of everyone present. Nobody became defensive, or aggressive, but there was a palpable change in the mood.

Finally, someone voiced what I sensed was the case, “That’s just the process Ash.”

And on we went, as though that question was put to bed and never to be raised again.

I’ve thought about that moment numerous times since, because it captures something that sits underneath organisational culture more often than we acknowledge. People don’t just follow rules because the rules are good, they follow them because the broader group has taught them what happens when you don’t.

This is why the old five monkeys’ story has stuck around for so long.

You’ve probably heard some version of the story. Five monkeys are in a cage with a ladder leading to a bunch of bananas. Every time one of the monkeys tries to climb up to the bananas, they all get sprayed with cold water. It doesn’t take long before they all stop going anywhere near the ladder, fearful of that cold water spray.

Then, the monkeys are all replaced, one at a time. The newcomers have never been sprayed themselves, but they quickly learn the same rule because if they head for the ladder the other monkeys pull them back. the sequence persists after all originals are gone. By that point, none of them know where the rule came from, they just know that this is how things are done.

Now, the exact version of the five monkeys’ story that gets shared in leadership circles has probably done more rounds in slide decks than research journals, but it certainly didn’t come from nowhere. The five monkeys story traces its roots to Gordon Stephenson’s 1967 research, which introduced ‘cultural acquisition’ and showed how groups transmit learned behaviour. Essentially, groups pass behaviour on and teach each other what’s safe, what’s risky, and what not to touch. The challenge is that often the rules continue to propagate long after the original risk has passed.

That idea holds up very well in corporate life and often manifests as the infamous line, “We’ve just always done it that way.” Because every workplace has “ladders” with bananas at the top. Every organisation has things no one questions anymore and processes that exist but can’t be fully explained. When we look around any organisation, we see reactions that were built for a particular moment, under a particular leader, in response to a particular problem, and then never revisited once the moment passed.

Culture often hangs around long after the reason for it has disappeared.

A lot of redundant workplace habits began as useful systems, in fact if you look far enough back in time, they were usually created in response to a specific problem and never revisited. For example, a hiring freeze introduced during a past downturn.

That stuff leaves a mark.

The issue is that most organisations are very good at introducing controls and not nearly as good at removing them, so the response becomes the routine and then the routine becomes tradition. Eventually, traditions become untouchable practices.

People learn culture from social cues far more than formal messaging.

Organisations spend a lot of time talking about values, which is an important discourse to encourage, but most people don’t learn values from a laminated poster or a polished all-hands presentation, they learn them by watching what happens;

Who gets backed?
Who gets shut down?
Who gets quietly sidelined?
Who gets called troublesome?

That’s culture.

You can tell a team to challenge ideas, but if the first person who does gets the look, the silence or the polite shut-down, everyone else gets the message fast.

That’s one of the reasons the five monkeys story remains useful. It points to something true about group behaviour; that we take our cues from the crowd, watch the reaction and then we adjust.

Conformity can look healthy right up until it starts costing you.

Most culturally stuck workplaces don’t look messy from the outside; in fact they look aligned. A tidy exterior can hide avoided questions.

But settled doesn’t always mean healthy. Sometimes it means people have worked out which questions aren’t worth asking anymore, like “Why do we still do it this way?”

Quiet conformity stalls improvement and people stop asking ‘Why do we still do this?’ so small inefficiencies persist. When no one challenges the routine, useful changes never get suggested.

New people usually spot cultural nonsense first.

That’s the gift of fresh eyes; new starters haven’t had time to normalise the odd bits yet. Consequently, they notice duplication, waste and clunky workarounds that appear normal to those in the organisation with tenure.

As a result, newcomers often ask the best questions and the real test for organisational culture is what happens next. Does the team stop and think? Or does it smile, say “that’s just how we do it,” and teach the new person to stop asking?

That moment tells you nearly everything you need to know about the organisation’s culture.

Good cultures stay open long enough to look at their habits and don’t assume almost every process is wise just because it has survived. They make room for challenge.

In the end, that’s why the five monkeys story still lands. Not because it gives us a perfect science lesson, but because it gives us a very recognisable human lesson about how organisational culture can operate.

A lot of organisational culture is just shared behaviours that nobody has properly re-examined in years. And once that sets in, people stop checking whether the ladder is still a problem, they just learn, from everyone around them, not to touch it.