For Sustained High Performance, Think Differently

“One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

The pace of change has obviously increased exponentially since Napoleon’s heyday, but the principle underlying Napoleon’s insight remains timeless.

Our brain is geared to seek efficiency and speed by forming habits. These are informed by our experiences and observations, but also by the sets of beliefs, structures, roles, procedures and norms of the context we find ourselves in.

Although habits bring many benefits, they also create the pitfall of making us less aware or even blind to fundamental shifts in our environment — sometimes until it’s too late.

The challenge is to avoid the situation in which it is ‘too late’. And that is what Napoleon’s quote illustrates for me. The world around you will change and to remain relevant and successful, there must come a moment where you (proactively) let go of old habits and adopt new ones.

Chris Argyris called this shifting from single-loop learning (habits) to double-loop learning: challenging your underlying assumptions, beliefs, ways of thinking and working. That is not easy to do, because it means admitting that your success formula is failing.

To make this shift easier, and apply Napoleon’s timeless insight, you can regularly reflect on what you do and why. Another way is to broaden your repertoire of experiences and observations, e.g. by reading books, articles or blogs on topics you typically do not read, speak with people from a completely different field than your own, or by immersing yourself in a learning experience where you cannot fall back on the familiar.

What works best for you?