“The Strategic Power of Patience and Tolerance in Business: Why Success Unfolds Over Time”
“The Strategic Power of Patience and Tolerance in Business: Why Success Unfolds Over Time”
By Marshall Krupp, Certified EOS® Implementer and Certified Outgrow Advisor
Every year, leaders, entrepreneurs, and organizations look back and evaluate what worked, what failed, and what surprised them. We analyze numbers, refine plans, improve processes, and assess talent. Yet there is one element of business success that is often overlooked because it cannot be measured in a spreadsheet and cannot be forced into a timeline. That element is patience.
Patience is not passive. It is not doing nothing. It is not waiting helplessly for conditions to improve. Patience is a discipline. It is a strategy. It is a leadership behavior that sets the foundation for sustainable success.
Tolerance works alongside patience. Tolerance is the measured ability to remain composed in the midst of challenges, pressures, personalities, conflicts, and the unexpected. When combined, patience and tolerance allow leaders to navigate uncertainty with clarity, teams to stay focused on long term outcomes, and organizations to maintain momentum through inevitable turbulence.
In the EOS world, we often say that with time all things needed to be successful unfold. Some outcomes cannot be rushed. Some clarity arrives only after experience. Some breakthroughs come only after a period of discomfort, learning, and refinement. The question is whether leaders can stay patient and tolerant enough to let the process work.
Patience Is a Strategic Advantage
In a business culture driven by speed, immediacy, and constant action, patience is often misunderstood as a lack of urgency. Yet patience is one of the most powerful forces in strategic leadership. It allows leaders to see beyond the moment. It preserves energy for what truly matters. It keeps teams aligned with the long view rather than reacting impulsively to short term pressures.
The investor Warren Buffett captured the essence of this mindset when he said, “The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” Buffett, widely regarded as one of the greatest investors of all time, was not simply talking about investments. He was talking about human behavior. Impatience creates poor decisions. Patience creates strength, discipline, and superior outcomes.
Business is no different. Success flows toward the patient.
When leaders practice patience, teams feel safer. They become more thoughtful. They move with intention rather than reactivity. Patience stabilizes decision making and gives people the confidence to take risks, solve problems, and operate without fear of being rushed into mistakes.
Tolerance Strengthens Leadership
Patience is about timing. Tolerance is about space. It is the mental and emotional space that leaders give to others when they are learning, struggling, growing, or operating from a different perspective. It is also the internal space leaders create within themselves to stay grounded when things do not go as planned.
Tolerance allows teams to work through conflict without collapsing. It prevents leaders from shutting down new ideas too quickly. It empowers cultures where different thinking is valued, not feared. And it provides the grace required for long term relationships to succeed.
Mahatma Gandhi, a global leader in peace and social change, said, “To lose patience is to lose the battle.” Gandhi knew that progress, whether personal or organizational, is often slow, uneven, and emotionally demanding. His insight reminds leaders that impatience rarely accelerates progress. It usually destroys it.
In business, impatience can push people too hard, create unnecessary conflict, or cause leaders to abandon ideas before they have had a chance to mature. Tolerance keeps the door to possibility open.
The Illusion of Control
Leaders often strive to control outcomes, timing, and results. This desire comes from good intentions. We want progress. We want certainty. We want momentum. But the truth is that many parts of business success cannot be controlled. They can only be influenced. And influence requires patience.
Markets change. People evolve. Clients take longer to decide. Employees need time to grow into their roles. Strategies require testing and refinement. Technology shifts the playing field. Financial cycles turn.
Trying to control timing creates frustration. Accepting that time performs its own work creates wisdom.
This is why the American industrialist Henry Ford once observed, “Most people get ahead during the time that others waste.” Ford, the pioneer of mass production and assembly line innovation, understood that progress looks slow until it becomes fast. The work leaders are doing today may not show visible results yet, but over time those efforts compound.
Patience is not an obstacle to progress. It is the mechanism that allows progress to be realized.
Patience and Tolerance in EOS Leadership
In EOS, the journey from Vision to Traction requires time. Leadership teams want instant clarity. They want immediate alignment. They want quick improvements in accountability, culture, and execution. These outcomes do come, but not on day one.
The Vision component takes time to deepen. The People component takes time to stabilize. The Data component takes time to refine. The Issues component takes time to strengthen. And the Process and Traction components take time to integrate across the organization.
Patience is not optional. It is required for EOS to work.
Tolerance is equally essential. When teams begin IDS, conflict surfaces. When roles are clarified, people resist change. When data becomes transparent, accountability improves but discomfort increases. When Rocks are introduced, execution challenges appear. These are not signs of failure. They are signs of growth.
Without tolerance, teams crumble during the storm. With patience and tolerance, they emerge stronger, aligned, and more capable than before.
Patience in Sales Growth
In the Outgrow program, one of the hardest lessons for sales professionals is that growth does not come instantly. It comes through consistent outreach, disciplined follow up, and relational investment over time. The salesperson who expects immediate results becomes discouraged. The salesperson who understands that success is a compounding process stays focused long enough to experience the payoff.
Prospects need time to build trust. Relationships need time to deepen. Value needs time to be demonstrated. The sales professional who remains patient builds a stronger book of business and becomes more resilient in shifting markets.
Tolerance also plays a role. It helps salespeople overcome rejection, adjust to client preferences, and stay grounded when conversations take unexpected turns. It gives them the emotional endurance required to keep moving forward.
Patience and tolerance create long-term producers, not short-term performers.
Why Leaders Resist Patience
Many leaders struggle with patience and tolerance because they see themselves as problem solvers. They want to fix. They want to move. They want to drive outcomes. These instincts are valuable, but if not balanced with patience they can create pressure that suffocates creativity and discourages accountability.
Leaders resist patience when:
- They feel behind
- They are driven by fear
- They feel the need to prove themselves
- They assume movement equals progress
- They equate patience with complacency
The truth is the opposite. Patience prevents wasteful movement. Patience protects energy. Patience aligns decisions with strategy. Patience keeps leaders from sacrificing long-term gains for short-term relief.
Tolerance supports this by allowing people the room to learn, refine, and improve without being shut down prematurely.
With Time All Things Needed for Success Unfold
Every business has seasons. There are seasons of construction, seasons of learning, seasons of refinement, seasons of growth, and seasons of harvest. Leaders who expect harvest during construction become frustrated. Leaders who understand the natural unfolding of progress stay grounded, focused, and effective.
When we look back, the path always makes sense. The challenges connected us to new solutions. The delays brought us new opportunities. The waiting strengthened our teams. The discomfort taught us new capabilities. And the time in between allowed everything to align.
Time is not the enemy. Time is the partner.
The work you do today will have its moment if you are patient enough to let it unfold.
A Call for More Patient and Tolerant Leadership
As we move into the next year of opportunity, challenge, and growth, I invite you to examine your relationship with patience and tolerance. Ask yourself:
- Do I allow time for things to develop, or do I rush the process?
- Do I create space for people to learn and improve?
- Do I tolerate inconvenience long enough to uncover insight?
- Do I trust that time has a role in success?
- Do I model patience and tolerance in the way I lead?
Organizations built on patience and tolerance do not collapse under pressure. They endure. They evolve. They succeed.
The leaders who master these two qualities unlock the rare ability to navigate complexity with calm strength. And in a world of constant change, that strength sets them apart.
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To connect with Marshall Krupp, you can reach him at marshall.krupp@eosworldwide.com or at 714.624.4552. You can also schedule a telephone or Zoom meeting with him on Calendly at https://calendly.com/peerexecutiveboards
Marshall Krupp is a nationally recognized EOS® Certified Implementer and a Certified Outgrow Advisor. He is also a national speaker and a past award-winning Vistage Worldwide Chair, with a career in providing crisis management strategic advisory services to businesses, governmental agencies, and not-for-profit organizations. He is also a certified facilitator of the Wiley Everything DiSC suite of assessment tools and PXT Select.
EOS®, the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, takes entrepreneurial businesses on a journey to master the EOS® tools, enabling them to elevate their leadership teams, make better decisions, maintain a high level of accountability, and attain greater success more simply. The components of EOS® are Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction, which, when used effectively, create a healthier organization with greater success.
The Outgrow sales program is designed to boost sales growth by encouraging bold, proactive communication, confidence, and accountable business sales teams. Marshall Krupp is a Certified Outgrow Advisor who guides and coaches businesses in implementing these strategies, helping their sales teams achieve 15-30% annual growth through consistent outreach and relationship-building efforts, along with the unique and creative tools of Outgrow.
Review more at www.peerexecutiveboards.com and at www.eosworldwide.com/marshall-krupp. Visit Marshall’s LinkedIn profile, posts, and articles at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshallkrupp/.