We got married a year before I finished college.
My wife was bringing in most of our meager income. As part of our pre-marital counseling, we met with a financial advisor who explained to us the power of compound interest. We opened a tiny investment account and put money into it every month.
Our early years were different from most American couples because we moved to Africa as part of a mission team. Our income was well below what it would have been had we stayed home, but we continued to make monthly deposits.
Ten years later, while still living in Africa, we used that investment account to build a house in Texas, and we began earning rental income at a 6x rate over what we had been depositing.
The moral of this story is not about us being smart or getting good financial advice: it’s about persistence.
A small effort applied continuously and consistently over time, produces massive results.
If you know that persistence should be more important to you, consider these three dynamics that may be holding you back and the mindset you need to solve them.
We get stuck in the wrong time-scale
Persistence is not a sexy leadership trait. Almost no one recognizes persistence while it is happening. We only celebrate it years or decades later with things like “Lifetime Achievement Awards.”
One reason leaders don’t persist is that they get stuck using a single time-scale.
Even leaders who know the value of strategic, long-term thinking can get hedged in by the pressure of monthly financials, quarterly reports, and year-over-year comparisons.
But the fruits of persistence are not measured in any of these time-scales. They often don’t show up until the earth has gone all the way around the sun a few times.
To get your head outside a single time-scale, build annual retreats into your schedule to revisit your core values—what is most important to you as a leader and to your business—and create specific courses of action that will move you in the right direction. This work has to be done on both a personal and business level.
We get discouraged by early obstacles
Another reason leaders don’t persist is that we get discouraged by early obstacles.
One executive constantly changed his marketing efforts. When obstacles arose that required additional money to solve, he would get discouraged and drop the effort after only a few months. The psychological pressure of seeing money go out every month without an immediate return was too much. Ironically, his lack of persistence probably increased the total amount of wasted money because of all the starts and stops.
Persistence is the trait that allows leaders to mentally reconcile themselves to the reality of obstacles without changing course.
Our culture today does not prize persistence. In fact, we idolize its opposite. We spout words like agile, pivot, maneuver, and speed. Those are valuable traits, but they are not always the right strengths for every occasion. The values that support persistence are dependability, stability, durability, and consistency. These values probably need more attention than they are getting.
Leaders can build their persistence by making an inventory of anticipated obstacles and making the connection between their efforts and the values that are enhanced by persistence.
We underestimate the time/effort it takes to change
The third reason we miss the mark on persistence is that we underestimate how long it takes and how hard it is to create change.
We’ve all heard that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Unfortunately, this is not true. The research tells us that the average time to create a new habit is more than three times that long (66 days), but can stretch to 254 days in some cases.
If you are expecting a personal change to take hold after only three weeks, you will be disappointed and likely give up on your efforts. Instinctively we know that organizations take longer to change, but we still drastically underestimate the time and effort required.
Leaders can strengthen their persistence muscles by making more realistic estimates of time and effort for change and then plan appropriately. That planning would include times for rest, refreshment, recharging, re-visioning, and recommitting to the effort.
Persistence unlocks the door to categories of success that can be achieved in no other way.
What could you achieve if you stuck with it for a whole year? For five years? For ten years? Leaders have the ability to envision those long-term results and stay committed over time.Follow us on LinkedIn to get thoughtful articles on the bridges leaders must build and cross to inspire greater performance.
