It's okay to be a quitter
If you're in the right company culture.
We often glorify “perseverance” in corporate culture, but to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, I do not think it means what we think it means.1 The definition really depends on the corporate culture. And when I look at how companies operate, I see a clear divide: input cultures versus output cultures.
In an input culture, a lot of people are doing their best in “showing up”—putting in long hours, and sticking with it, no matter the cost. People get praised for their effort and grind, even when the results don't amount to much. Sadly, this type of company culture is also rife with cognitive traps like the sunk cost fallacy (we can’t fire that exec because it took months to hire them!) and loss aversion (this isn’t great, but it could be worse!). The focus is more on the effort invested than on the outcomes achieved.
On the other hand, an output culture is driven by results. It’s less about how much time you clock in and more about what you actually accomplish. In this kind of environment, employees are encouraged to meet their goals, and if something isn't working, they have the freedom to pivot or drop it altogether.
That’s why I get a little squeamish when I hear someone praised as “a dog with a bone.” Tenacity can certainly be a virtue, but the real difference between success and failure most often lies in knowing when to push forward and when to step back. People who solve big, hairy problems aren’t the ones who blindly persevere—they’re the ones who know when to quit.
As with nearly everything, it comes back to company culture.
It’s easier to tell an SDR to cold-call a hundred accounts than to build an environment that encourages them to find innovative ways to connect with prospects. It’s easier to double down on a product plan from a few quarters ago than to make a hard call to pivot when things aren’t working. It’s easier to soldier through a long, manual finance close than to introduce a more efficient process that may shake up some departmental fiefdoms.
While the “perseverance” approaches may work in the short term, it tends to lead to high turnover and burnout and people being jaded. An environment that champions creativity and innovation will always outperform one that doesn’t.
There are practical ways to foster this kind of culture in your company. Simple exercises like stop, start, and continue can help. You can also encourage reflection, lead by example, and reward the behaviors you want to see more of.
And, thankfully, there are plenty of examples of output culture if you look for them in the wild. Take Jean-Michel Lemieux, former CTO at Shopify with a pretty unorthodox way of looking at product planning (inputs) vs. shipping (outputs):
Persistence has its place, but it needs to be balanced with the wisdom to know when to change course. Contrary to popular belief, winners quit a lot. In fact, that’s how they win.
Anybody want a peanut?