I saw this in Cambodia a few years ago and couldn’t stop laughing.

A durian Blizzard.

For the uninitiated, durian is a fruit so pungent it’s banned in hotels and public transit across Southeast Asia. Someone at Dairy Queen looked at their traditional Blizzard menu and said, let’s put that in there.

Bold move. Questionable decision. Absolute break from tradition.

The Pharisees came to Jesus with a complaint. Why do your disciples break the tradition of our elders?

Jesus didn’t defend it or soften it. He turned it right back: why do you break God’s commandment because of your tradition?

I’ve been thinking about that exchange as a first-year CEO of an organization that’s been around for forty years. Every organization accumulates traditions. Some are gold. Others are just calcified habits nobody questions because questioning them feels disloyal.

Unquestioned tradition is one of the most quietly dangerous forces in any organization. Not because tradition is bad, but because it can become a ceiling.

Question everything. Not to destroy what’s good. To find out if it still is.

(for what it’s worth, I did not try the durian Blizzard.)