A number of years ago, I spent some time working with Xerox in the UK. Xerox had been synonymous with photocopying for so long that its name had become a verb. You didn’t photocopy something; you “Xeroxed” it. It is hard to imagine a stronger position for any company to hold in its market.
When I was there, however, things were radically different. I was working with one of the directors, and I remember him reflecting on the journey the company had been through and how quickly a position that once seemed almost unassailable had changed.
Years earlier, Xerox hadn’t simply participated in the photocopier market; in many ways, it had created and defined it. Then Japanese photocopiers began appearing. Initially, there didn’t seem to be too much cause for concern. The machines were cheaper, smaller and different, and the assumption was that they weren’t serious competition to Xerox and the quality it represented.
As the Japanese manufacturers began gaining market share, the explanation started to change. Perhaps customers didn’t understand the difference in quality. Then, as the competitive pressure increased further, another explanation emerged: the Japanese manufacturers must be dumping photocopiers into the market at artificially low prices. Surely they couldn’t genuinely make them for that price. There was even a view that government intervention and protection might be required.
What is interesting with hindsight is where everyone was looking for the problem. It was the competitors, the market, the pricing or the rules. The possibility that Xerox itself might need to fundamentally change the way it operated was much harder to contemplate.
Eventually, people from Xerox went to Japan to understand what was happening. What they discovered was confronting. The Japanese manufacturers had developed production systems and ways of working that enabled them to manufacture copiers significantly more efficiently and cheaply. The problem wasn’t simply unfair competition. There were lessons Xerox itself needed to learn.
By the time the reality was fully understood, the options had narrowed considerably. Xerox did change, but change was no longer something that could be considered at leisure. It had become a necessity.
The Xerox Trap
I have remembered that story for years, probably because it was never really a story about photocopiers.
It was a story about people.
It showed what can happen when previous success shapes the way we interpret what is happening around us. The approaches, beliefs and behaviours that helped us become successful can become so deeply embedded that questioning them feels almost like questioning ourselves.
The trap rarely starts with arrogance. More often, it starts with understandable confidence in what we know. We have done something successfully for years, we have experience, and we have evidence that our approach works. When something begins to change, our natural instinct is therefore to interpret the new situation through everything we already know.
We tell ourselves that we have seen this before, that the problem is temporary, or that we simply need to work harder at what we are already doing. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that. The danger comes when confidence gradually becomes certainty, certainty becomes rigidity, and rigidity prevents us from seeing what reality is trying to tell us.
The Denial Process
Since my time with Xerox, I have seen versions of this pattern play out repeatedly in organisations, businesses, relationships, families and individual lives. The circumstances are different, but the progression is remarkably familiar.
Stage 1: Dismissal — “It’s not really a problem.”
We notice the warning signs but minimise them. Perhaps sales are slipping, a relationship feels different, someone keeps giving us the same feedback, or something simply doesn’t feel right. We convince ourselves that it is temporary and there is plenty of time.
Stage 2: Rationalisation — “There are good reasons why things are like this.”
As the evidence grows, we become very good at explaining it. The explanation may even be perfectly reasonable. The difficulty is that sometimes we are using explanations to protect our existing view rather than genuinely trying to understand what is happening.
Stage 3: Externalisation — “The problem is somewhere else.”
Attention turns outward. It is the economy, our customers, employees, partner, family, competitors or circumstances. Sometimes those factors genuinely are contributing to the problem, but focusing exclusively on them allows us to avoid the more uncomfortable question: What might I need to do differently?
Stage 4: Reality — “Something has to change.”
Eventually, the evidence becomes difficult to explain away. The business is struggling, the relationship has deteriorated, opportunities have disappeared, or circumstances have changed enough that the old approach simply cannot continue.
Stage 5: Forced Adaptation — “I have no choice now.”
Change finally happens, but instead of happening from a position of strength and choice, it happens under pressure. Often the options are fewer and the consequences greater than they would have been if we had acted earlier.
When Pride Gets in the Way
There is another dimension to this that I have seen do enormous damage: pride.
I once knew someone who was made redundant from a senior executive role. Initially, there was every reason to believe another senior position would come along. He had experience, capability and a successful career behind him, but as time passed and the right opportunities didn’t appear, friends began encouraging him to broaden his search and perhaps consider roles at a different level.
There was always a reason not to. Something would come along. The market was difficult right now, but things would improve in the new year. Certain businesses clearly needed his skills but simply couldn’t see the value he could bring. Taking a lower-level role felt like going backwards.
None of this came from a lack of intelligence, determination or capability. The deeper problem was that accepting help or taking a different kind of role required him to let go of something much harder to surrender: an identity built over many years around status, achievement and being a senior executive.
Months became years, and eventually there came a painful acknowledgement that perhaps some of the earlier advice should have been listened to. By then, however, opportunities had narrowed considerably.
This same dynamic can have an even greater cost when relationships are involved.
Think about siblings who fall out over something that, at least initially, might have been repairable. Neither quite knows how to start the conversation, or perhaps both believe the other person should make the first move. Pride becomes mixed with hurt, hurt becomes a story about what happened and who was right, and gradually time does what time does.
A Sunday lunch is missed, then another. Children see less of their cousins. Nieces and nephews grow up without the connection they might otherwise have had. Christmas becomes awkward. Years can disappear while everyone waits for somebody else to do something.
The original disagreement may eventually become almost irrelevant compared with what has been lost because of it.
And yet the whole trajectory can sometimes change when one person is brave enough to put being connected ahead of being right. Someone picks up the phone, knocks on the door or simply says, “I don’t want this to continue. Can we talk?”
That isn’t weakness. It may be one of the strongest things a person can do.
The Illusion
The illusion behind all of these situations is deceptively simple:
If what got me here has worked before, it will continue to work.
The difficulty is that life doesn’t stand still. Markets change, relationships evolve, families transition, children grow up, organisations develop and leadership demands shift. We change too, even when we don’t notice it happening.
What served us brilliantly at one point in our lives may not serve us equally well at the next.
Sometimes the greatest risk, therefore, isn’t failure itself. It is becoming so attached to a particular way of doing things, or a particular idea of who we are, that adapting feels like admitting defeat.
The Insight
The people and organisations that navigate change well aren’t necessarily those who have all the answers. Often, they are simply the ones who remain willing to question the answers they already have.
They stay curious enough to notice when something is changing and humble enough to consider that someone else may see something they don’t. They can listen to uncomfortable feedback without immediately needing to defend themselves, and they recognise that changing direction doesn’t automatically mean the previous direction was wrong.
It may simply mean the conditions have changed.
There is an important distinction here. Growth doesn’t require us to continually abandon everything that has worked or endlessly reinvent ourselves. It requires enough openness to recognise when something that once served us is no longer serving us in the same way.
Sometimes that means changing a business model. Sometimes it means changing how we lead. Sometimes it means asking for help, accepting a role we once thought was beneath us, apologising to someone we love, or making the phone call we have been avoiding for years.
The common thread is a willingness to exchange certainty for curiosity, defensiveness for humility, and pride for possibility.
Questions Worth Asking
Perhaps the Xerox story gives us a useful reason to occasionally stop and look at our own lives with fresh eyes.
Where might you currently be telling yourself, “It’s not that bad”?
Is there feedback you have heard more than once but continue to dismiss? Is there a conversation you know needs to happen, but you keep finding reasons to postpone it? Is something changing around you while you continue to rely on an approach that worked brilliantly in the past?
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all:
What if the thing you are protecting is the very thing preventing your growth?
Final Reflection
Xerox eventually adapted.
But they did so because they had to.
The challenge for all of us is this:
Can we recognise the need for change while we still have a choice?
Can we respond to reality before it becomes crisis?
Can we choose humility before circumstances impose it upon us?
Because the signs are often there long before the consequences arrive.
The question is whether we’re willing to see them.
From Illusion to Insight
Xerox eventually adapted, but the lesson that stayed with me was that by the time it did, change had largely moved from being an opportunity to being a necessity.
That distinction matters.
There will always be changes we cannot anticipate and circumstances we cannot control. But there are also times when the signs are there well before the consequences arrive. We sense the relationship drifting. We hear the feedback. We see the market changing. We know the conversation needs to happen. Somewhere underneath all the explanations, we often know.
The challenge is whether we can respond while we still have choices.
Illusion:
What worked before will keep working.
Insight:
Growth sometimes requires us to release the very strategies, beliefs and identities that once helped make us successful.
Perhaps wisdom isn’t found in proving that we were right all along. It is found in remaining curious enough to notice when the world has changed, humble enough to acknowledge when we need to change with it, and brave enough to act before circumstances make the decision for us.
What truth might you be explaining away because accepting it would require you to change?
