Grit is often misunderstood as simple persistence (the ability to keep going when things get hard). However, in practice, persisting and working hard alone rarely sustain meaningful progress over long periods. When I reflect on the periods of my life and career that required the most from me, I realize that what sustained my progress was structure. There were moments when effort was high, motivation was strong, and outcomes were expected to follow quickly, but it was not the case. What became clear to me over time is that grit, as a performance mindset, is about sustaining intelligent effort in a way that compounds and the discipline of staying engaged with a goal long after the initial motivation fades and early results fail to appear. In practice, the environments I have worked in over the years rarely reward short bursts of effort. They require sustained engagement with complex problems that do not resolve quickly but require consistency over time to create actions that will eventually lead to outcomes.
What shaped my understanding of grit further was experience with failure as a recurring feature of meaningful work. In reality, some initiatives do not deliver as expected, so strategies often need to be reworked, and assumptions revised to achieve outcomes. In those moments, the temptation is either to disengage or to push forward without reflection, and from experience, neither approach works. I have learned from those moments that grit is the ability to pause, interpret what is happening, and then continue with greater clarity. It is about refusing to disengage while adapting intelligently. Over time, I have come to see grit as a composite mindset built on growth, resilience, intention and tenacity.
In my own work, it is the interaction of the four elements that allows effort to become effective in achieving outcomes. One of the most important shifts in my thinking has been viewing effort as the primary driver of performance through the lens of direction, learning, and recovery. I have seen situations where individuals work extremely hard but remain stuck, not because they lack commitment, but because their effort is not well-structured to evolve into tangible outcomes. Grit, when understood strategically, ensures that effort is continuously refined to transform repetition into improvement and persistence into progress.
From a systems perspective, the impact of grit is often delayed. For instance, in many of the programs and initiatives I have been involved in, results did not emerge immediately. Instead, they accumulated gradually, through small, consistent actions that were adjusted over time. In the early stages, this can be discouraging because there are few visible signals of success. But over time, patterns begin to form, and those patterns produce outcomes that appear disproportionate to the effort invested. What looks like a breakthrough is often the result of sustained, disciplined engagement that remains largely unseen.
Looking back, the most defining outcomes in my work were achieved through the ability to remain engaged over time with clarity and intention. Grit, in that sense, is a practical discipline, and the decision to continue, to learn, to adjust, and to stay aligned with a goal even when progress is not immediately visible. The question I now consistently ask myself is whether my effort is structured in a way that allows it to endure, adapt, and compound with time.
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Dr. David Tsetse, Ph.D. | SiBI
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