Sylvester Stallone was broke. He couldn’t pay his bills. All he had was a screenplay called Rocky. Studios wanted the script but not Stallone. They were happy to buy his idea, provided somebody else played the lead.
He refused.
It was an extraordinary gamble.
Selling the script would have solved his immediate problems. Instead, he walked away because he believed the destination mattered more than the short-term reward.
The gamble paid off. Rocky grossed more than $600 million worldwide, won three Academy Awards and launched one of cinema’s most enduring franchises.
Most people think the lesson is “never give up”. I think that’s the wrong lesson. We hear phrases like “try, try and try again”. Office walls are covered with motivational posters reminding us that failure is simply another step towards success.
It sounds encouraging, but it isn’t the whole story. If success were simply a matter of repeating the same action often enough, everyone would eventually succeed. They don’t.
Stallone didn’t succeed because he kept doing the same thing. He succeeded because he recognised the existing system wasn’t working and changed the way he approached it. Instead of waiting for opportunity, he created it.
That’s not blind persistence. It’s adaptive persistence.
It reminds me of one of my favourite sayings, often attributed to Charles Darwin:
It is not the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but those most adaptable to change.
Whether Darwin actually wrote those exact words is debatable, but they perfectly capture the principle behind evolution. Evolution isn’t a reward for strength. It isn’t a reward for intelligence. It’s a reward for adaptation.
Perhaps we’ve misunderstood resilience in exactly the same way. Resilience isn’t absorbing punishment indefinitely while refusing to change. Determination isn’t doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping the world eventually notices.
Real resilience is holding onto your destination whilst remaining completely flexible about how you reach it.
History is full of people remembered for perseverance, but what really distinguished them wasn’t persistence. It was their willingness to adapt.
Abraham Lincoln lost business after business before becoming President. Henry Ford went bankrupt repeatedly before creating Ford Motor Company. Thomas Edison refined thousands of experiments before perfecting the light bulb. Einstein continually challenged his own thinking. J.K. Rowling rewrote and resubmitted. Walt Disney reinvented himself after bankruptcy. Michael Jordan turned rejection into relentless practice.
It’s tempting to file these stories under the comforting slogan of “never give up.” I don’t think that’s the lesson at all. None of these people simply kept repeating the same actions until fortune smiled on them.
The same lesson applies to business.
Kodak invented the digital camera but couldn’t adapt its business model. Nokia dominated mobile phones but struggled to adapt to smartphones. Blockbuster recognised the threat from Netflix but couldn’t adapt its economics.
Meanwhile, Amazon evolved from an online bookshop into one of the world’s largest cloud computing companies. Nvidia transformed itself from a graphics chip manufacturer into the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence. Stripe has continuously reshaped its platform as developers’ needs have changed.
They weren’t defending yesterday’s success. They were continually reinventing themselves for tomorrow’s market.
That’s why I’ve never really liked the phrase “try, try and try again.”
It encourages repetition when what we should really be encouraging is learning.
A better philosophy would be:
Try.
Learn.
Adapt.
Repeat.
The destination stays the same.
The route evolves.
In an age where technology, markets and artificial intelligence are changing faster than ever before, that may be the most valuable lesson of all.
The people who thrive won’t be the strongest.
They won’t necessarily be the smartest.
They’ll be the ones who learn faster than everyone else.
Try.
Learn.
Adapt.
Repeat.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...