Fandom is Forever, Business Models Shouldn't Be

I recently had a couple of conversations surrounding the difficulty of incumbent businesses to adapt and evolve. The metaphor I began to think about was a favorite sports team.

The takeaway is that incumbent businesses struggle to adapt — not just because of uncertainty or resource constraints, but because of something more human: identity.

When I was eight years old, I decided the Toronto Maple Leafs were my favourite NHL hockey team. My family lived in a small town in the middle of Saskatchewan, Canada — 500+ miles from the closest NHL city and no ties to any major city with a team. There was no logical reason to like Toronto.

However, I liked the starting goaltenders helmet. I loved dogs. And Curtis Joseph, nicknamed “Cujo,” had an image of an aggressive looking dog from Stephen King’s book on it:

That was the entire decision-making process at the time. And then I just never changed.

The Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967. They have only won two playoffs series over the last 20 years. They've made choking in the playoffs into some what of an art form. At this point, I am simply used to saying “there is always next year.” The Leafs are an easy target for people to make fun of.

But I'm still a Leafs fan.

Why? Because at some point, being a Leafs fan stopped being a choice and became part of how I see myself. My friends and family know. We talk about hockey and I bring up the Leafs. I used to make bets with friends come playoff time, or during the regular season. Being a “Leafs Fan” is woven into conversations, my identity, my emotions and my hat and jersey collection. The decision I made as a kid growing up in Saskatchewan is effectively calcified and never going to change.

I now live in Calgary, Alberta. There's a professional hockey team right here (Calgary Flames). I could easily switch. Nobody would care. But I don't, because inertia and identify is powerful. The way we identify ourselves is influential. And there's always that hope of “maybe next year,” that keeps me fully locked into being a Leafs fan.

I think it’s a useful metaphor for why businesses struggle to adapt their models, approaches or efforts beyond simple “uncertainty.”

Companies get attached to how decisions were made in a different era, under different conditions and environments that no longer exist. Maybe the original logic was sound (or maybe it was the logical equivalent of liking a goalie's helmet). Either way, the decision gets made, the identity forms around it, and then the world changes.

Then, new competitors show up. Technology advances and customer needs evolve. The environment is dynamic, but organizations still run the playbook from when it "picked its team." Or in this case, it’s business model, or it’s internal systems, or being process oriented, or how it runs it’s R&D efforts because “that’s just the way it’s always been.”

There's inertia and there's the sunk cost of how the company sees itself, it’s systems and it’s core competencies. There's the social reinforcement, too — everyone in the organization is bought into the same narrative and dissenting from that is not normal, particularly for long standing individuals. And there's that persistent hope that the old approach will eventually pay off if you just stay the course long enough.

But businesses aren't sports teams.

I can afford to be a Leafs fan forever. The cost is primarily emotional (though an early heart attack due to stress isn’t out of the question). However, a business that refuses to change because "this is who we are" doesn't get another season. The market doesn't care about your identity and it surely doesn't care about your loyalty to a strategy, or process, or action that made sense five, or ten years ago.

The danger in my mind isn't just that companies cling to the wrong playbook — it's that they cling to it confidently, wrapped in some comfort of shared belief and past success. Every season I tell myself "next year," I'm not really suffering any consequences beyond disappointment. But every quarter a company tells itself "next year," the window narrows. Competitors aren't waiting., customers might leave and the market is adapting whether you act or not.

The companies that survive and thrive are the ones willing to do the thing I'll never do with my favourite hockey team — look at their changed circumstances and actually respond to them. Not next year, but as they identify the need to change.