The weight of any success we have had tends to harden us in our approach to new problems. This would be great if the world never changed or if circumstances remained the same in every event of our lives.
We know that is not the case, however. Thus, when our past success hardens us in a mode of operating and we’re closed off to new ideas or methods for getting things done, we “get stuck in the past.”
The 60-year-old former drill sergeant had success screaming to get things done. If he doesn’t accept the circumstances which made the screaming and threats both acceptable and effective, he’ll be doomed to a life of people seeing him as a violent or unsettled person.
The same can be said for the 60-year-old marketing executive. The tactics and methodology of the 1990s may have given him success, but he was perfect for the 1990s. The question becomes, will he adapt to the new Information Age and the way people purchase things today?
The lesson for each one of us is that we must take great care not to let our past success harden us and thicken our willingness to adapt to an ever-changing marketplace. We should be open to seeing the need to change and then courageous enough to do something that we might be unsure will work at all (after all, nobody had success with social media marketing in the 1990s–because nobody had social media.)
The courage to learn and the courage to do what we haven’t done before. This will become my generation’s greatest marker of future success.