“Where do we go from here?” Leaders confronted by the unsettling nature of change and uncertainty share this question around boardrooms, battle maps and kitchen tables everywhere. The question is both timely and timeless, and its answer requires equally timely and timeless wisdom – accessed only through perseverance. Giving others a way to tap into that wisdom is why we wrote Perseverance > Endurance.
Over the past nearly 30 years, we’ve had countless opportunities to ask the related, and bottomless question, “Why?” For better or worse, we have experienced unfathomable tragedies in combat, devastation in the home, the chaos of post-service transition, and the ups and downs of business in volatile markets. We tap into those stories throughout Perseverance > Endurance, not to pound our chests so others can celebrate our crucibles, but to share hard-earned leadership wisdom so that others can face theirs. We feel compelled to share because we know two things for sure. First, we will all–every one of us–eventually reach the extent of our endurance; and second, perseverance is an endeavor best navigated together.
Endurance is admirable. It’s putting our shoulder to the wheel to get through a defined period of hardship. We often use the illustration of a marathon or any other endurance sport. Marathons are hard, yet they are a known quantity. Whether you’re running at Disney, Boston, or Athens, it’s 26.2 miles, and you’ll know the course map before you swipe your card and register. You’ll learn something about yourself on the course and be challenged, but you won’t be changed. Transformation happens when we persevere through life’s unmarked courses.
Where endurance tests us, perseverance transforms us to achieve amid continuous and unpredictable adversity. Endurance helps us to reach the finish as an exhausted version of ourselves. Perseverance requires us to become someone new. We came upon this insight amid the chaos of COVID-19. It was the first time we were on the sidelines of an American crisis in our lifetimes. To that point, we had always been “ground guys” at the tip of the spear.
Blayne took the hard path to West Point out of high school, watched the world change on 9/11/01 just months after commissioning, led cavalry scouts in Iraq, and Green Berets in Afghanistan. Brandon enlisted and volunteered for the Ranger Indoctrination Program in 1998, served in special operations for nearly a decade, and was in the Middle East eight days after the towers fell before serving four rotations to Afghanistan. We both exited service during the recession in 2009/ 2010, thrusting ourselves into corporate America while trying to hold families together torn apart by war, death, and separation. We endured but couldn’t undo the damage done along the way. It was devastating. And as we saw this devastation wreaking havoc throughout the veteran community, we both felt called to do something about it.
In the early 2010s, we left behind lucrative corporate jobs to return to our tribe, helping build Team Red, White, and Blue (Team RWB) into the fastest-growing veteran-serving nonprofit in America and disrupting the narrative about veterans. We rejected the broken-hero narrative in exchange for the leader-asset. Veterans are not somehow damaged goods to be pitied. We are assets to our communities and our country when we fully come home and embrace a rich life consisting of health, genuine relationships, and a renewed sense of purpose. When we left Team RWB, we had 150,000 members operating in over 200 cities.
We stayed on the trail, Brandon leading at The Tennyson Center for Children, one of the oldest and most respected child welfare nonprofits in America, and Blayne serving as the president of GORUCK before serving as the health and wellbeing director at the George W. Bush Institute. Every step took us further into the adversity of big problems with little solutions. Yet we led teams with resilience, grew through adversity, and won together.
When COVID-19 hit, we had just started our leadership development company, Applied Leadership Partners. As you can imagine, starting a company in March of 2020, just three days before the COVID-19 lockdown, was yet another healthy dose of adversity. Yet we persevered. In doing so, we realized that we were exactly where we were supposed to be, in a position to share hard-earned leadership wisdom with others persevering through adversity. In those dark days, we hosted countless free whiteboard/ advising sessions. We served leaders in a variety of industries–teachers, sales professionals, nonprofit executives, government officials, insurance salesmen, healthcare executives, and more.
The common question came from many then, “Where do we go from here?” That question comes from many now. “Where do we go from here?”
In a word: Forward.
The path through adversity is accessible when we persevere. It is out of reach when we try to endure, doing the same thing and expecting different results. Simply enduring may allow us to survive, but only perseverance gives us a chance to thrive. When we looked across the landscape in the summer of 2020, we saw so many people who we loved and admired barely hanging on, white-knuckling a collection of tactics that served them well in the past, but offered them little help in that chaotic and uncertain time. We wrote this book for them, to give people perspective and support to answer that question.
While we don’t know the brand of adversity you’re facing right now, we know you need to locate yourself, orient toward your purpose, and take the next best steps forward. In Perseverance > Endurance, we offer a framework for perseverance to give you something to hold onto: change, uncertainty, acceptance, choice and growth. We hope you find it useful in your journey, and we hope you initiate movement because the truth is, there are no answers at the trailheads of life; all the answers are on the trail.
Blayne Smith and Brandon Young led teams in Army Special Operations, corporate, nonprofit, and startup sectors for nearly thirty years. They are the co-founders of Applied Leadership Partners and authors of Perseverance > Endurance, available wherever books are sold, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Books-A-Million.