The story speaks to how even the most talented and experienced leaders, who’ve successfullly navigated through many challenges, may overlook or misinterpret arising threats or fail to perceive them at all. That may be true even when they’ve instituted good monitoring systems, with the best data gathering and analytics, and have crackerjack strategy and operations teams supporting them. Ironically, the more success they’ve driven, the more they may be given to misreadings and slackening of vigilance.

Advice on combating the status quo bias by methodically rethinking business assessments and gaining perspective from outside the firm is not new. But the problem is that far too few leaders develop a rigorous and continuous discipline of doing so. And if CEOs don’t impose that discipline on themselves, nobody else will.

The imperative to challenge yourself becomes more difficult to achieve the longer you have been doing the job successfully. Nigel Travis said, “Being a CEO for longer is tougher because you have to find ways to keep improving.” Some CEOs recalled feeling less engaged in this stage, with boredom creeping in. “When you get into years six to ten, the intellectual stimulus is less,” one shared. “You come in with lots of ideas,” another commented, “and then run out of them.” Someone else said, “Years six to ten is a period of time when the luster is off the rose and what was new and exciting is no longer new and exciting.

Investors and analysts may also communicate directly with CEOs, providing well-founded criticisms and good arguments for change needed, or at least challenging a CEO’s current views. Nigel Travis highlighted that “I’ve always loved dealing with investors and analysts because it gives you that outside-in perspective. Who else could I talk to who’d studied and gone into Starbucks, into McDonald’s?” his two leading competitors. “It really enhances your understanding of the competition and broadens your external perspective enormously.” He shared that before leaving any investor or analyst meeting, he’d say, “I’ve listened to all your questions. Now, I’m going to ask you one: Tell me what were doing wrong. What would you do differently?” Being receptive to and actively soliciting such critique was only one way he combated status quo bias at Dunkin’.

Travis found a number of additional ways to regularly tap into the perspective of those outside the firm. He would appear at Q&A sessions with MBA students, which gave him access to the views and attitudes of younger people. In addition, twice a year he attended CEO Summits held by Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld. These are vigorous debate events in which leaders across industries and from around the globe, as well as government figures, research analysts, and journalists, are challenged to engage in wide-ranging discussions of topics, from global political issues, such as competition with China, to leadership style. Attendees are often put on the hot seat, for example, to defend a statement they made in the press. Travis recalled that one summit he was pitted against an investor who had very publicly shorted Dunkin’ stock and whom Travis had strongly rebuked in a press interview. As he wryly commented about the encounter, the sessions ensure that “you can't fall asleep.”

The single most helpful source of outside perspective Travis found was gained by joining the boards of other companies. “If you asked me about the one thing I’ve done in my career that really helped my development as a CEO,” he told us, “it was sitting on another board. Every time I got to a board meeting, I write down more about the company I’m running than I do about that company.” Acknowledging that many CEOs say they don’t have time to serve on another board, he stresses that not only does it help to see how other companies operate but also the other company has “got a plethora of experiments going on that you can utilize for your company.

1. Nigel Travis, The Challenge Culture, Kindle ed. (New York: PublicAffairs,2018), 34.