Turkey legs

I was recently having a coffee chat with one of our team leads, who was onboarding a new team member. And we laughed about the “turkey legs” story.

You know, the one where a daughter asks why the family recipe mentions cutting the legs off the Thanksgiving turkey before putting it in the oven. After some digging, grandma reveals that, many decades ago, her oven was too small. Technically, a practical workaround that had turned into a “standard operating procedure”, religiously kept generations later - for no good reason.

So we talked about how, in our team at Livit, onboarding isn’t just about teaching someone our way of doing things - the tools, the values, the team culture, the SOPs.

Fresh eyes can notice and ask: why are we still cutting the legs off the turkey?
Every new team member or household member, every new tech tool (and especially any new AI system you’re training), every new house/move is an excellent opportunity to spot the turkey legs, the outdates habits or SOPs we haven’t questioned in a while.

Let’s be honest:

We rarely do it otherwise. Because it’s paralizing to do it every day all day and you wouldn’t get anything done if all you did were “reconsider everything” all day long.

I’ve been doing this audit at Livit lately. Some of our SOPs have very small ovens behind them. Some of our policies were built for different people and a very different time. Some tools made sense in 2019. And almost none of this gets questioned, until someone new walks in and asks why. I love those people who ask why. They’re my people.

So,
What are the “turkey legs” in your company, team or even home life? What’s something you’ve done for ages that no longer makes sense?