About inflection points and the trap of doing what works
Every day, I work with leaders on energy: how do you stay fit physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually? Four batteries you need to manage consciously if you want to keep performing at a high level over the long term.
What I see time and again: the most dangerous moments for a leader are not the difficult ones. Those force you to course-correct. The most dangerous moments are the good ones, when everything is running smoothly, when you don’t feel like anything needs to change. That is precisely when the batteries quietly drain without you noticing. You keep going, you’re in flow, and you don’t realize you’re slowly running out of steam.
Recently, I experienced that same insight at an organizational level, during a strategic session that Beanmachine organized for itself, facilitated by Till Bohbot.
Inflection points
Till introduced the concept of inflection points, which made me think of the “success trap”: what happens when organisations keep doing what made them successful, until they suddenly realise it has become outdated.
Nokia dominated the mobile phone market and kept investing in what worked. Research in Motion built Blackberry into the standard business device and watched the market shift beneath them. Not because of bad decisions, but by making the same good decisions for too long in a world that had already changed.
Success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow. That sounds logical. But in practice, it is surprisingly hard to act on that logic, precisely when things are going well. For organizations. And equally for leaders.
The underlying mechanism is the inflection point: the moment when a curve fundamentally changes direction. Not up or down: the nature of the movement itself changes. The curve that kept climbing more steeply begins to level off. Or tilts in a different direction.
What makes inflection points so treacherous: they rarely announce themselves. In the moment, everything seems to just keep going. In hindsight, the turning point is always crystal clear.
For Beanmachine, this is not the first time with this concept. In 2020, Till already helped us through a first inflection point: the transition from start-up to “grown-up”. Three years ago, a new growth phase followed. And now, with that foundation in place, we deliberately chose a moment of reflection. Not because something is wrong, but because we know what happens when you wait until you have to move.
Always change a winning team
As Till carefully explained what an inflection point is, I realized something. As a consultant, I see it often with the leaders I work with: those who are performing well, delivering results, bringing their team along, they hold on to what works. Understandable. But the implicit belief underneath is: never change a winning team.
With the logic of inflection points fresh in my mind, I thought: that is actually wrong.
It should be: always change a winning team.
The best time to change is precisely when you have the space to choose. When you are not under pressure, when your energy is good, when your results speak for themselves. That is when you decide which direction the curve takes. Wait too long, and the curve decides for you.
That applies to organizations. But I notice it just as strongly with the leaders I coach: those who wait for a moment of crisis to reconsider their energy are too late. You recharge the batteries before they run empty.
What we decided at Beanmachine
Not more, but better. Making sharper choices about what we do and for whom.
We are doubling down on embedding behavioral change within organizations, not standalone interventions, but trajectories that create lasting impact and real anchoring. And we are making something explicit that we have been doing for a while: strategic offsite facilitation. For organizations that are facing a next chapter and want to think deliberately about direction. What we do: co-designing and facilitating the process, not strategy consultants, but guides who make sure the right conversations happen and that the insights actually land.
We know what it does. We have done it ourselves.
Is your organization facing a next chapter? I would love to have that conversation.
