The default effect: What happens when you do nothing
One of the most robust findings in behavioral economics is the default effect: people tend to stick with whatever is already in place. The current option feels natural and safe simply because it is the current option and it signals what others do.
In telecom, the default sounds like:
- “I have had this subscription for years; it works (I guess??), so I will keep it.”
- “Switching will be a hassle; I will look into it later.” →Ergo you will forget about it and don’t do anything.
In professional services, the wording changes, but the logic is the same:
- “We have always used this folder structure on the server.”
- “Clients are used to email; they will not use a portal.”
- “Our current CRM is not perfect, but everyone knows how it works.”
- “We tried a tool once and it was too complicated.”
Over time, the existing setup becomes the implicit, sticky standard. It may be slow, fragmented or error‑prone, but it requires no new decision, no learning effort and no disruption. Change, by contrast, demands attention and energy. It means reviewing processes, training people, accepting a period of adjustment and uncertainty. Our brains are wired to conserve effort, so the path of least resistance is to leave things as they are, even when the business case for improvement looks compelling.
“It’s rarely about the software itself, it’s about the psychology that keeps us loyal to what no longer serves us.” - Mathias Celis, PhD
Status quo bias: why risk feels bigger than reward
Status quo bias reinforces this pattern. The familiar feels safer than the unknown, even when the unknown is clearly better on paper. Professionals start to build narratives that justify staying with the current system: “What if the migration is more work than expected?” “What if we lose data?” “What if the new way of working does not fit everyone?”.
These explanations are not always based on structured analysis. Often they reflect deeper psychological dynamics. Loss aversion means that potential losses weigh heavier in our minds than comparable gains. The possible “loss” of comfort, control or time during a transition can easily overshadow the prospect of long‑term efficiency and better margins.
The telecom example makes this visible in euros. Many consumers only consider switching when the annual saving looks large enough, even though the accumulated gain over five years can be substantial. In professional services, the same pattern appears in time. A new digital solution might save a few hours of administrative work per person per week. At first glance that seems modest and easy to postpone, yet those hours add up across a year and across a team. They become room for more client work, faster turnaround or simply less evening and weekend work. The short‑term friction of change feels concrete; the structural gain stays abstract and distant.
Complexity and decision fatigue
Another barrier is complexity. The telecom market offers an excess of bundles, options and promotions. Many people feel they cannot oversee all the differences, and the simplest choice becomes to keep what they have.
Psychologist Sheena Iyengar demonstrated this beautifully in a now-classic experiment. She set up two tasting tables in a supermarket: one with 6 varieties of jam, the other with 24. The large table attracted more curious shoppers, but when it came to actually buying a jar, the small table vastly outperformed it: 30 percent of tasters purchased versus just 3 percent at the large table. Ten times fewer purchases, simply because there were too many options. Iyengar called it choice overload. Barry Schwartz later popularised the idea in his book The Paradox of Choice: our brains are not built to weigh dozens of options side by side. When the number of choices exceeds a handful, doubt creeps in, the fear of picking the "wrong" option grows, and we end up choosing nothing at all.
Professional service firms face their own version of the 24-jam table every time they look at their technology stack. Project management, client portals, document management, workflow automation, practice management, CRM, AI assistants and more. The market for professional service technology has exploded in recent years, and every option raises questions about integration, compatibility, configuration and change management. Decision-makers quickly experience fatigue and postpone: "We will look at it after this busy period", "We should first map all our processes properly", "We tried something like this years ago".
In that environment, the existing system can start to feel surprisingly attractive. However imperfect it may be, at least everyone knows how to work around its limitations. "It works well enough" quietly turns into the default strategy.
The paradox of expertise
Many professional service firms help their clients question how things have always been done. They advise on optimization, digitalization and process redesign. They guide others through change.
Internally, however, they often rely on tools and workflows that no longer match their own ambitions. Files are spread across email and shared drives, reporting depends on spreadsheets, and key knowledge lives in the heads of a few experienced people. It is not a question of awareness or available technology. This stuff is core to human nature.
knowing ≠ doing
Technology in itself does not create transformation. Most firms know their systems are outdated. Most partners can point to the inefficiencies. The gap is not in awareness, it is in action. And that gap is not a strategy problem or a technology problem. It is a behavioral one.
Real impact comes when organizations recognize the behavioral forces that keep them tied to the status quo and deliberately design around them: by making the new way of working the standard, by reducing the first step to something manageable and by making the true cost of the current situation visible. The same way changing a default on a government form saved thousands of lives in the Netherlands, changing the defaults inside an organization can unlock transformation that years of good intentions never did.
The real question is therefore not whether better tools exist, but which "telecom subscriptions" inside your firm are still active simply because they once became the standard and have never been challenged since?Whoever is willing to answer that question honestly has taken the first real step away from the default.
Ready to find out?
We built a free, printable workbook based on the behavioral science in this article. Six exercises, designed to be completed with your leadership team in 90 minutes. It includes a 15-minute alarm exercise that reveals how your day actually looks (instead of how you think it looks), a blind spot checklist of the 20 most common friction points in professional service firms, and a cost calculator that puts a euro figure on your status quo.
No fluff. No sales pitch. Just a pen, radical honesty, and 90 minutes.
