Mar 24, 2026
The patterns that got you here won't get you there
What worked in the past is now working against you. Recognizing the shift is where change begins.
Every successful person has patterns that drove their success—ways of thinking, working, and relating that produced results. The problem is that these patterns have an expiration date.
What got you through the building phase may not serve you in the maintenance phase. What made you effective as an individual contributor may limit you as a leader.
The Pattern Trap
Patterns become traps when we apply them unconsciously, long after the context has changed. We keep doing what worked, confused about why it's no longer working, applying more effort to the same approach.
The first sign of a pattern trap: working harder produces diminishing returns.
Conscious Evolution
The work isn't to abandon everything that brought you here. It's to examine each pattern with fresh eyes: What context did this serve? Does that context still exist? What would serve the current context better?
This requires a kind of honesty that success often protects us from. But it's the only path forward.