What to Say When a Colleague Says ''That's Not How We Do It Here

You’re in the meeting. The air is stale with the faint smell of coffee and whiteboard markers. You’ve just finished outlining your proposal, a new reporting workflow that would save the team at least five hours a week. For a moment, there’s a silence that feels like possibility. Then, from across the table, a senior colleague leans back in their chair, crosses their arms, and says it. “That’s not how we do it here.” The words land like a dead weight, and the flicker of momentum is gone. Your stomach tightens. You want to defend your idea, to pull up the data, but you know it’s not about the data anymore. You find yourself searching for what to say to someone who shuts down new ideas, and the blinking cursor in your brain comes up empty.

What just happened wasn’t a rejection of your proposal. It was a boundary being drawn. The person across the table isn’t saying your idea is bad; they are saying you are an outsider. This phrase is a conversational shortcut that does two things at once: it asserts the dominance of the group’s established identity and it frames your new idea as a threat to that identity. It’s a move that replaces a discussion about merit with a referendum on belonging. The reason it’s so hard to counter is that any attempt to argue for your idea’s logic only reinforces their point: you just don’t “get it.”

What’s Actually Going On Here

When someone uses a phrase like “That’s not how we do it here,” they are often activating a powerful, unconscious defence mechanism. Humans are wired to value the familiar. We tend to prefer things not because they are better, but because they are known. An established process, even an inefficient one, feels safe. A new one, even with clear benefits, represents uncertainty and risk. Your colleague isn’t necessarily being difficult; they are responding to the perceived risk of change. Their brain has quickly calculated the cost of learning something new, the social risk of the new thing failing, and the personal cost of their own expertise in the “old way” becoming obsolete.

For instance, think of a team that has used the same complex spreadsheet for financial tracking for a decade. A new team member suggests using dedicated accounting software. The veteran who built and maintains that spreadsheet hears, “The thing you have expertly managed for ten years is now worthless, and so is your expertise.” The resistance isn’t to the software; it’s to the implied erasure of their contribution and status.

This pattern is also reinforced by the wider system. Most organisations, whatever they say about innovation, have a strong bias toward stability. Managers are often rewarded for predictable, consistent output, not for successful experiments (and are certainly penalised for failed ones). The person shutting you down is acting on the system’s real incentives, becoming an agent for its unspoken preference for the status quo. They are performing a function for the group: guarding the established order.

What People Usually Try (and Why It Backfires)

Your first instincts in this moment are almost always the wrong ones. They feel logical, but they pour fuel on the fire.

• The Move: Defending your idea with data.

  • How it sounds: “But the numbers show this would increase our lead conversion by 15%. It’s clearly more efficient.”
  • Why it backfires: You’re treating an identity problem as a logic problem. By presenting more data, you are implicitly calling them illogical, which forces them to dig in their heels to protect their standing.

• The Move: Criticising the old way.

  • How it sounds: “Honestly, the way we do it now is completely outdated and slow.”
  • Why it backfires: You’ve just made it personal. You aren’t just critiquing a process; you’re insulting their history, their work, and their judgment. You’ve turned them from a sceptic into an enemy.

• The Move: Pulling rank or appealing to a higher authority.

  • How it sounds: “Well, I showed this to Maria, and she was really excited about it.”
  • Why it backfires: This converts a conversation about an idea into a power struggle. You’re telling them their opinion doesn’t matter because someone more important disagrees. It’s an escalation that creates lasting resentment.

A Better Way to Think About It

The goal is not to win the argument. The moment you try to win, you’ve already lost, because the frame is now “me vs. you.” The real move is to change the frame from “my new idea vs. your old way” to “us vs. a shared problem.” To do this, you have to stop selling your idea and start investigating the world of the person who is resisting.

Your first job is not to persuade, but to understand. Specifically, you need to understand what the old way protects. What values, skills, or stability does it preserve? When you hear “That’s not how we do it here,” you should translate it in your head to: “There is a reason we do it the way we do, and you haven’t shown me that you understand or respect it.”

Your strategy, then, is to make them feel understood. Acknowledge the legitimacy of the past before you propose a change to the future. You have to join them on their side of the table and look at the problem together. Once they see you as someone who values their experience and understands their world, their defensiveness can lower enough to even consider a new path.

A Few Lines That Fit This Move

These are not scripts to be memorised. They are illustrations of the move from defending to investigating. Notice how each one validates the other person or the existing process before asking a question.

• The Line: “You’re right, this is a big departure. Help me understand the history of the current process. I want to make sure I’m not missing something important it was designed to do.”

  • What it’s doing: This line immediately agrees with them (“You’re right”), validates their perspective, and positions you as a curious student, not an arrogant disruptor.

• The Line: “That’s a fair point. The current system has obviously served the team well for a long time. What’s the most important thing it protects that we need to make sure we don’t lose?”

  • What it’s doing: It explicitly gives credit to the old way and asks them to identify its core value, making them a partner in defining the criteria for any new solution.

• The Line: “I hear that. It sounds like there’s a lot of institutional knowledge tied up in that process. My only concern is [mention a new external pressure, like a client demand or a budget cut]. How well is the current process set up to handle that?”

  • What it’s doing: It acknowledges their point and then reframes the issue around a shared, external problem, inviting them to be a fellow problem-solver instead of a gatekeeper.

• The Line: “I completely get the hesitation. Instead of a full switch, what would be the harm in us trying this on one small project for two weeks, just to see what we learn?”

  • What it’s doing: This de-risks the entire proposal. It’s no longer an all-or-nothing threat, but a small, low-stakes experiment that offers learning instead of failure.