Tenacity: Built, Not Born

Grit is a lie we’ve been sold. People don’t persist because they’re tougher. They persist because their systems are stronger. Two entrepreneurs can face the same failures, and one will keep going while the other quits. The difference isn’t grit. It’s what I call Engineered Tenacity.

The Tenacity Myth

People’s success comes down to growing three aspects: skillset, mindset, and context. And, after running four companies and advising CEOs, the most important aspect holding CEOs back is…mindset. More importantly, it’s the stories we tell ourselves when things get hard. Consider this contrast:

Two entrepreneurs are launching similar startups. Both face the same brutal realities: customer rejections, funding struggles, and sleepless nights debugging code that refuses to work. One pushes through year after year, iterating through failure after failure until a breakthrough. The other burns out after six months and returns to corporate life.

What separates them?

Most people would say “grit” or “natural tenacity.” They’d point to character, willpower, or some inborn capacity to endure. This explanation feels satisfying because it’s simple. It also happens to be wrong.

According to research from Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly (2007), grit is a question of nature and nurture, not one or the other. The entrepreneur who persisted didn’t possess some magical gene for endurance. Instead, they had often unconsciously built the right systems to sustain effort over time.

Tenacity isn’t a trait you either “have” or “don’t.” It’s not about summoning heroic levels of willpower or “just wanting it more.” Tenacity is a system, the product of four critical inputs working together: motivation that pulls you forward, competence that shows you how to move, interpretation that reframes setbacks as data, and environment that provides feedback and support.

The difference between those who quit and those who persist isn’t character. It’s engineering. And that’s incredibly good news, because frameworks are repeatable, scalable and bring predictable results.

How I Discovered the Four-System Model

This framework didn’t emerge just from academic theory. It crystallized through three conversations in three days that forced me to think more systematically about what actually drives tenacity.

The first conversation happened during a client visit, where we discussed who succeeds in life. You know the people who build skills, mindset, and context. The topic of trauma came up, and I shared how growing up in a broken, addicted home helped build my mindset. But after I left the office, I realized I’d given an incomplete answer. Trauma can build resilience, but it’s not the only path (or factor) that shapes your mindset. I acted like enduring hard things (either trauma or doing physically hard things) was the only way. At best, I was incomplete; at worst, I was wrong.

The next day, I spoke at a conference and shared “The 5Ts of Execution” framework I developed: tools, time, training are on the leader then talent, and tenacity stand on the employee. During the session, a conference attendee pulled me aside specifically to discuss tenacity: how to spot it, how to build it, and how to know when someone has it. That conversation pushed me to think beyond identifying tenacity to understanding its underlying mechanics.

This struck me as even more curious because Rachel and I talk about ensuring we raise, gritty tenacious kids. Despite reading a dearth of books and articles, I hadn’t sat to think about how to build tenacity through my own Mental Models and Frameworks. It’s hard to ensure when you haven’t fully considered your thoughts. 

The third conversation came via text from a CEO I advise. He was struggling with “what’s missing” in a senior leader on his team. After some back and forth, you guessed it: tenacity. This leader had skills, intelligence, and good intentions, but kept abandoning difficult initiatives when progress slowed. Our discussion revealed that his persistence wasn’t failing randomly. It was breaking down in specific, predictable ways.

And, in two weeks, I’m presenting the VIP training at the Badass Business Summit. One of my sessions focuses in on mindset, so I’ve been bouncing around what I’m going to teach. This forcing function compelled me to sit down and break it down.

These conversations inspired me to distill years of research and mental models into a more systematic framework. The aspect that bothered me most was the question of “how” at the conference. While Rachel and I want gritty resilient kids, I hadn’t yet mapped the framework. During deep thought, I realized that tenacity isn’t one thing. It’s the emergent result of four interdependent systems working together.

Engineered Tenacity: The New Category of Persistence

For years, we’ve been told that the secret to success is “grit.” Dig deeper. Tough it out. Some people have it, some don’t. But here’s the problem: if grit is a trait, then persistence is random and leaders are left hoping their people can hang on long enough to succeed. And, you’ve heard me say this a million times: Hope is not a strategy.

The truth is, grit is incomplete. People don’t persist because of some mystical inner toughness. They persist because the right systems are working together. Motivation pulls them forward. Competence makes progress possible. Interpretation sustains belief in the face of setbacks. And environment validates progress and reinforces the journey. When those systems align, persistence isn’t heroic, it’s engineered.

This is what I call Engineered Tenacity. Unlike grit, which is static and unteachable, Engineered Tenacity is a flywheel you can design, measure, and scale. Each system feeds the next: motivation fuels effort, competence makes effort effective, interpretation sustains effort, and environment reinforces effort. Together, they create a self-reinforcing cycle that doesn’t just carry individuals forward. It compounds momentum across teams and organizations.

For leaders, the stakes couldn’t be higher. If you keep treating tenacity as personality, you’ll keep losing talented people when the work gets hard. But if you embrace Engineered Tenacity, you can design persistence into your culture. You’ll build teams that survive setbacks, and accelerate through them. That’s the difference between hoping your people have grit and knowing your organization is built for endurance.

The Four-System Framework

Think of tenacity like a four-engine airplane. Not all engines need to run at maximum power simultaneously, but if too many fail, the whole system goes down. The four engines of tenacity are:

Motivation (Hopes > Fears): Your hopes and dreams have to be bigger than your fears. This isn’t about wanting something badly. It’s about autonomous motivation that pulls you forward rather than fear-based motivation that eventually exhausts you.

Competence (Skills & Context): You persist when you know how to move forward. This includes both domain-specific skills and the meta-skill of learning what you don’t know.

Interpretation (Explanatory Style): The story you tell yourself about setbacks determines whether they fuel resilience or surrender. How you explain failures, either as temporary or permanent, specific or global, internal or external, shapes your capacity for continued effort.

Environment (Support & Feedback): Culture, accountability, and visible progress sustain effort over time. Tenacity thrives in environments that provide regular feedback loops and community support.

When people persist through extraordinary challenges, they’ve usually built strong systems across all four areas, often unconsciously. When they quit despite good intentions, it’s typically because one or two systems are failing, undermining the others.

When you step back, what makes this framework powerful is not just the strength of each system on its own, but the way they feed each other. Motivation sparks the effort to move, competence makes that effort effective, interpretation sustains belief when obstacles appear, and environment validates progress with feedback and support. Then, like a flywheel gathering momentum, those wins reignite motivation creating a self-reinforcing cycle of persistence.

This is why tenacity often looks effortless in the most resilient people: they’ve unconsciously built a flywheel that keeps turning even when the work gets hard. The opportunity for leaders, and anyone intent on growing their capacity to persist, is to stop treating tenacity as a test of character and start designing it as a system. Once the flywheel is in motion, it doesn’t just carry you forward, it compounds results.

Here’s how each system works and how to build it systematically.

System 1: Motivation (Hopes > Fears)

The first myth most people believe about tenacity is that motivation is simply about “wanting it more.” Coaches yell it from the sidelines. Managers demand it in meetings. Self-help books preach it endlessly: find your why, dig deeper, want it badly enough.

This advice isn’t just incomplete, it’s counterproductive. Desperation and fear-based motivation create the brittle kind of effort that snaps under pressure. Real tenacity requires a different type of fuel: autonomous motivation that pulls you forward rather than pushes you away from what you don’t want.

According to Self-Determination Theory, conditions supporting the individual’s experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness foster the most volitional and high-quality forms of motivation and engagement for activities, including enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity. When your goals align with your values and give you a sense of choice, you don’t have to manufacture willpower constantly. The work becomes self-sustaining and joyful.

Research shows that the more students’ motivation is autonomous, the better their academic performance, the longer they persist, the better they learn, the greater their satisfaction is, and the more positive their emotions at school are. This isn’t just true in education; it applies anywhere sustained effort matters.

How to Build Motivation That Sustains

Clarify your “why.” But not just any why. Your motivation must connect to something larger than avoiding failure. Instead of “I can’t afford to fail,” try “I want to solve this problem because it matters.” The difference between approach goals and avoidance goals determines whether you’ll have energy left in month six of a challenging project.

Anchor to vision. When you can picture a better future, not just the absence of problems, but the presence of something meaningful, you develop what researchers call “future-focus.” This allows you to tolerate today’s discomfort because you’re building toward tomorrow’s possibility.

Use approach goals. Frame your effort toward building something, not just avoiding failure. “I want to create a product that helps people” sustains longer than “I don’t want to go broke.” The brain responds differently to moving toward value versus away from threat.

The entrepreneurs who persist aren’t more desperate than those who quit. They’re more connected to a vision that pulls them through obstacles rather than a fear that eventually exhausts them.

System 2: Competence (Skills & Context)

The second myth about tenacity suggests that some people are simply “naturals” who persist because the work comes easily to them. This gets the relationship backward. People don’t persist because they’re naturally good. They become good because they know how to persist productively.

Competence, the need to be effective and master tasks, is one of three fundamental psychological needs that drive human motivation. When you feel capable of making progress, when you have the skills and context to move forward, persistence becomes logical rather than heroic.

The key insight: tenacity isn’t about grinding through confusion indefinitely. It’s about building enough competence to see the next step, even when you can’t see the destination.

Think of a programmer debugging complex code. The novice stares at error messages and feels helpless, quickly giving up in frustration. The experienced developer recognizes patterns, knows where to look for clues, and has systematic approaches for isolating problems. Both face the same obstacle, but only one has the competence to persist productively.

How to Build Competence That Enables Persistence

Deliberate practice. Choose hard, specific tasks that stretch your abilities without overwhelming them. Research shows that in the National Spelling Bee, grittier competitors accumulate more hours of deliberate practice over the years, which in turn fully mediates the effect of grit on final ranking. The practice itself builds both skill and the capacity to persist.

Deconstruct complexity. Large problems feel insurmountable, but every complex challenge can be broken into smaller, solvable pieces. When you can see the next concrete step, even if it’s small, you maintain forward momentum. Competence often means knowing how to make big problems smaller, not solving everything at once. There’s a reason that Everest has Basecamps on the way to the top.

Learn in context. Don’t just build skills in the abstract; tie them to real problems you care about. When learning serves a meaningful purpose, you develop both competence and the motivation to persist through difficult skill-building phases.

The entrepreneurs who persist through years of setbacks aren’t more talented. They’ve developed enough competence to recognize that today’s obstacle is solvable, even if the solution isn’t immediately obvious. They know how to learn what they need to learn.

System 3: Interpretation (Explanatory Style)

The third myth about tenacity is that it’s simply about “thinking positively” or maintaining an upbeat attitude. This misses the deeper psychological mechanism at work. What matters isn’t blind optimism; it’s how you explain setbacks to yourself.

Your explanatory style, the story you tell yourself about why things go wrong, is one of the most powerful predictors of whether you’ll persist or quit. According to Martin Seligman’s research, optimists believe bad events to be temporary happenings rather than permanent failures. Thus, they bounce back quickly from them, whereas others may take longer periods to recover or may never recover.

This isn’t about denying reality or pretending failures don’t hurt. It’s about interpreting setbacks in ways that preserve your ability to take action. Seligman’s research identifies three critical elements of explanatory style: Permanence (temporary vs. permanent), Pervasiveness (specific vs. global), and Personalization (external vs. internal attribution).

When the tenacious entrepreneur’s product launch fails, they think: “This approach didn’t work this time, but I can try a different strategy.” When the fragile entrepreneur faces the same failure, they think: “I’m not cut out for this, and I’ll never succeed at anything.” Same event, radically different interpretations, completely different outcomes.

How to Build an Explanatory Style That Fuels Persistence

Shift from permanent to temporary. Replace “I failed because I’m not good enough” with “I haven’t figured it out yet.” That simple word “yet” transforms a verdict into a work-in-progress. When struggling 7th-grade students learned to think of their brains as muscles that grow with exercise and visualize new connections developing within their brains, their motivation and math scores improved at a time when math achievement typically declines. Same is true in business. A Craftsman’s mentality creates magic.

Adopt a growth lens. Every obstacle becomes a data point, not a verdict on your capabilities. Stanford professor Carol Dweck’s studies show that students with a growth mindset consistently outperform students with a fixed mindset. Students who believed their intelligence could be developed outperformed those who believed their intelligence was fixed. When you believe abilities can be developed, setbacks become information rather than identity threats.

Use mental contrast. Picture the obstacles you’ll likely face, then visualize the specific actions you’ll take to overcome them. This isn’t positive thinking. It’s a realistic preparation that builds confidence in your ability to handle difficulties before they arise. A plan reduces stress and mental friction of the unknown, even if it isn’t a great plan.

The entrepreneurs who persist through rejection after rejection haven’t eliminated negative emotions. They’ve learned to interpret setbacks as temporary, specific problems to be solved rather than permanent, global evidence of their inadequacy. Their explanatory style protects their capacity for action. And, the most successful people I know take action differently than the “coulda, shoulda, wouldas” of the world.

System 4: Environment (Support & Feedback)

The fourth and perhaps most overlooked myth about tenacity is that it’s a solo journey: truly gritty people pull themselves up by their bootstraps and persist through sheer individual will. This heroic narrative is appealing but wrong. Tenacity is fundamentally social and environmental.

According to Harvard Business School’s Teresa Amabile, of all events that occur at work, the event having the most prominent positive effect on emotions, perceptions, and motivation is simply making progress in meaningful work. But here’s the crucial insight: progress isn’t just about effort, it’s about visible, measurable forward movement that your environment recognizes and reinforces. This is why sharing “wins” regularly becomes a forcing function on recognizing your own progress.

Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by hundreds of employees in several different organizations reflecting on their day, Amabile and Kramer found that even seemingly minor steps forward can reveal the progress principle. Small wins, events that only had a minor impact on a project, accounted for 28% of the days participants considered to be good days.

This research reveals why so many well-intentioned persistence efforts fail. People focus on grinding through difficulty without engineering the feedback loops that sustain motivation over time. Without visible progress markers and environmental support, even the most determined individuals eventually burn out.

How to Engineer Environment and Feedback for Sustained Effort

Design micro-wins. Break large goals into small, measurable milestones that provide frequent evidence of progress. The entrepreneur who celebrates each customer interview, each feature shipped, and each small revenue increase builds a sustainable motivation system. The one who only measures “success” as a billion-dollar exit creates a feedback desert where persistence withers.

Build accountability. Tenacity is easier in a community than alone. This doesn’t mean finding people to pressure you. It means surrounding yourself with others who understand your goals and can recognize progress you might miss yourself. Seventh-grade students receiving growth-mindset feedback were twice as likely to revise and resubmit assignments compared to students who received generic feedback. The quality of feedback from your environment directly impacts your persistence.

Remove friction. Cut out unnecessary barriers so your persistence targets the hard work, not the stupid work. If you’re trying to build a daily writing habit, don’t waste willpower deciding what to write about. Prepare topics in advance. If you’re learning a new skill, eliminate the small obstacles that make practice harder than it needs to be.

The entrepreneurs who persist for years haven’t developed superhuman willpower. They’ve designed environments that make progress visible, provide regular feedback, and minimize unnecessary friction. Their tenacity looks effortless because they’ve engineered systems that support sustained effort rather than fighting against them.

Why Most People Fail at Building Tenacity

Now you understand why most attempts to build tenacity fail spectacularly. People focus on one system while ignoring the other three, creating unstable foundations that collapse under pressure.

The fitness enthusiast who relies purely on motivation (“I really want to get in shape”) without building competence (proper form, progressive programming) burns out when initial enthusiasm fades. The entrepreneur who develops incredible skills but operates in isolation, without feedback loops or community support, grinds alone until exhaustion wins.

Missing 1-2 Systems: The Compound Failure Effect

Here’s the crucial insight: these four systems aren’t independent; they’re interconnected. When one system fails, it undermines the others in a cascade of deteriorating persistence.

Consider someone trying to learn a complex skill like coding. They start with strong motivation (System 1) but skip deliberate practice and jump into complex projects (weak System 2). When they hit obstacles they can’t solve, their explanatory style shifts from “I’m learning” to “I’m not a technical person” (System 3 collapses). Without visible progress or community support, they quit within weeks (System 4 never develops).

When struggling 7th grade students learned to think of their brains as muscles that grow with exercise and visualize new connections developing, their motivation and math scores improved. This intervention worked because it addressed multiple systems simultaneously: interpretation (growth mindset), competence (understanding how learning works), and environment (structured support from teachers).

The One-System Trap

Most tenacity advice focuses on a single system:

“Find your passion” (motivation only) ignores that passion without competence leads to frustration. You can love music intensely, but without developing actual musical skills, your enthusiasm will fade when you can’t play the songs you hear in your head.

“Just work harder” (competence only) ignores that skill without autonomous motivation creates dutiful but brittle effort. You might build impressive abilities, but without an intrinsic connection to the work, you’ll quit when external pressure disappears.

“Think positive” (interpretation only) ignores that optimistic thinking without progress becomes self-delusion. You can reframe setbacks all day, but without actual forward movement, even the most robust explanatory style eventually cracks.

“Join a community” (environment only) ignores that social support without internal systems becomes dependency. When the group’s energy fades or circumstances change, your persistence disappears with it.

The Diagnostic Insight

Duckworth and her team found that juniors with the most grit were more likely to graduate from high school than their less gritty peers, even after accounting for standardized test scores and demographics. What separated persistent students wasn’t raw ability; it was having robust systems across all four areas.

The students who persisted had clear reasons for finishing school (motivation), study strategies that worked (competence), ways of interpreting setbacks as temporary obstacles rather than evidence of inadequacy (interpretation), and support systems that provided feedback and accountability (environment).

Those who dropped out typically had one or two strong systems but critical gaps in the others. Their tenacity looked solid until pressure found the weak points.

This is why building tenacity isn’t about becoming tougher; it’s about becoming more systematic.

The Diagnostic Framework

The good news about tenacity being a system is that you can diagnose exactly where yours is breaking down. Most people quit without understanding why. They assume they lack willpower or weren’t “meant” for difficult pursuits. But tenacity failures follow predictable patterns.

Here’s how to audit your current tenacity systems and identify precisely where to focus your efforts.

System 1 Diagnostic: Motivation (Hopes > Fears)

Ask yourself: When I think about this goal, do I feel energized or anxious?

Strong motivation signals:

• You can explain why this goal matters beyond avoiding negative outcomes
• Working toward it feels aligned with your values, not just your circumstances
• You find yourself naturally thinking about next steps and possibilities
• The vision of success pulls you forward more than the fear of failure pushes you

Weak motivation signals:

• Your primary driver is avoiding something bad rather than creating something good
• You struggle to explain why this goal matters to you personally
• You feel like you “should” want this more than you actually do
• Most of your energy goes toward managing anxiety rather than pursuing opportunity

System repair: If motivation is your weak link, spend time clarifying what you’re building toward, not just what you’re trying to avoid. Connect your efforts to larger purposes that genuinely matter to you.

System 2 Diagnostic: Competence (Skills & Context)

Ask yourself: When I encounter obstacles, do I usually know what to try next?

Strong competence signals:

• You have reliable methods for learning what you don’t know
• Setbacks feel like puzzles to solve rather than walls you can’t scale
• You can break complex challenges into manageable pieces
• You seek feedback and adjust your approach based on what you learn

Weak competence signals:

• You feel overwhelmed when problems don’t have obvious solutions
• You tend to repeat the same unsuccessful approaches when stuck
• You avoid challenges that stretch your current skill level
• You rarely seek input from others who know more than you do

System repair: If competence is your weak link, invest in deliberate skill-building before pushing for big outcomes. Find mentors, take courses, or practice in lower-stakes environments.

System 3 Diagnostic: Interpretation (Explanatory Style)

Ask yourself: When things go wrong, what story do you tell yourself?

Strong interpretation signals:

• You view setbacks as temporary situations rather than permanent realities
• You can separate specific failures from global judgments about your abilities
• You balance taking responsibility with recognizing external factors
• You naturally look for lessons and next steps rather than dwelling on blame

Weak interpretation signals:

• Failures feel like evidence that you’re “not cut out” for this
• One setback makes you question everything about your approach or abilities
• You either blame yourself for everything or take responsibility for nothing
• You focus more on what went wrong than on what to do differently

System repair: If interpretation is your weak link, practice reframing setbacks as data rather than verdicts. Focus on Seligman’s three elements: making failures temporary rather than permanent, specific rather than global, and balanced rather than entirely personal. “Yet” is a critical mindset.

System 4 Diagnostic: Environment (Support & Feedback)

Ask yourself: Can you point to concrete evidence of recent progress?

Strong environment signals:

• You have regular ways of measuring and celebrating forward movement
• Other people in your life understand and support your goals
• You’ve designed your physical and social environment to make persistence easier
• You receive useful feedback that helps you improve rather than just encouragement

Weak environment signals:

• You can’t identify specific progress you’ve made in the past month
• You’re pursuing important goals mostly in isolation
• Your environment creates unnecessary friction that drains energy from the real work
• Most feedback you receive is either absent, generic, or focused on outcomes rather than process

System repair: If environment is your weak link, create better progress tracking, find or build a community around your goals, and remove unnecessary obstacles to consistent effort.

The Multi-System Approach

Research shows that when students’ motivation is autonomous, they perform better academically, persist longer, learn more effectively, experience greater satisfaction, and have more positive emotions. But this only works when supported by the other systems.

Most people have one or two strong systems and assume that’s enough. The diagnostic reveals why this doesn’t work: your weakest system determines your breaking point. You might have incredible motivation and strong skills, but if your explanatory style collapses under pressure or your environment provides no feedback, you’ll quit despite your other strengths.

The solution isn’t to strengthen everything equally. The goal is to identify your weakest system and shore it up until all four can support each other.

Engineering Your Tenacity

The myth of “natural tenacity” not only misleads us but also actively harms our ability to persist. When we believe grit is an inborn trait, we stop looking for systematic solutions to persistence problems. We blame character instead of fixing systems.

But now you know better. Tenacity isn’t about summoning heroic willpower or possessing some magical gene for endurance. It’s about engineering the right mix of motivation that pulls you forward, competence that shows you how to advance, interpretation that reframes setbacks as data, and an environment that provides feedback and support.

Research confirms that grit is a question of nature and nurture, not one or the other. The “nurture” part, the systems you can build, matters far more than most people realize. Analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries shows that even seemingly minor steps forward can have the most prominent positive effect on emotions, perceptions, and motivation. Small, systematic improvements to your tenacity infrastructure create compounding returns over time.

Start With Your Weakest System

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Use the diagnostic framework to identify which of your four systems needs attention first. You may have strong motivation and solid skills, but your explanatory style crumbles under pressure. Or you’re great at reframing setbacks and have a supportive community, but you lack the competence to make consistent progress.

Students receiving growth-mindset feedback were twice as likely to revise and resubmit assignments compared to students who received generic feedback. Small, targeted interventions in your weakest system often unlock progress across all four areas.

If motivation is your weak link, spend time connecting your efforts to values and visions that genuinely matter to you, not just outcomes you think you should want.

If competence is the issue, invest in deliberate skill-building before pushing for big results. Find people who know more than you do and learn from them systematically.

If interpretation undermines your persistence, practice explaining setbacks as temporary, specific situations rather than permanent, global verdicts on your abilities.

If the environment lacks support or feedback, create better progress tracking and build a community around your goals.

The Leadership Opportunity

This framework doesn’t just apply to individual persistence. It’s a blueprint for building tenacious teams and organizations. Conditions supporting autonomy, competence, and relatedness foster the most volitional and high-quality forms of motivation and engagement for activities, including enhanced performance, persistence, and creativity.

Leaders can design tenacity into their cultures by helping people connect work to meaningful purposes (motivation), providing skill development and clear next steps (competence), modeling growth mindsets and healthy responses to setbacks (interpretation), and creating visible progress markers with supportive feedback loops (environment).

The same four systems that enable individual persistence scale to create organizational cultures where tenacity becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Your Tenacity System Starts Now

Every person who has ever achieved something difficult, every entrepreneur who built a lasting company, every artist who mastered their craft, every scientist who solved a critical problem, had to develop these four systems. Most did it unconsciously, through trial and error over the years.

You can do it systematically, starting today.

Choose one system that needs strengthening. Make one small change that moves you toward autonomous motivation, or practical competence, or healthier interpretation, or better environmental support. Then build from there.

Remember, research shows that small wins, events that only had a minor impact on a project, accounted for 28% of the days participants considered to be good days. Your tenacity system grows the same way: through small, consistent improvements that compound over time.

Tenacity isn’t something you’re born with or without. It’s something you build, system by system, choice by choice. And once you understand how it works, you can engineer as much of it as you need.

The only question is: what will you persist at building?