Escaping the pull of the past is not about becoming a different company overnight. It is about making sure you are not a prisoner of your own success. The past should inform your judgment, not dictate your trajectory.

If your organization’s rate of learning and resource reallocation lags the rate of change in the market, it does not matter how strong your current position is. Gravity wins.

The financial services industry stands at a crossroads unlike any before. We live in a world defined by VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity), a term originally coined by the military but now perfectly capturing the turbulent economic, competitive, and regulatory landscapes banks must navigate.

Many banks today hold a meaningful share in legacy markets that are now low or no growth, and a meaningless share in nearby growth markets. That’s a fast track to irrelevance.

If you really want to understand your customers — what they’re trying to get done, the pains they’re trying to avoid, and the gains they’re chasing — you need a different kind of dialogue.