Repeating the Same Thing Expecting Different Results PART 2: Organizational Behavior; Cultural Traps, and Inertia

In Part One, we peeled back the curtain on a phenomenon that plagues dealership owners and GMs everywhere: the habit of repeating familiar strategies while hoping—often unrealistically—for different results. Despite knowing the famous definition of insanity, we still find ourselves locked into old routines. Why? Because powerful psychological forces like self-justification, cognitive inertia, and our innate bias toward the status quo quietly keep us trapped in comfortable repetition. Our minds cleverly rationalize outdated practices, shield us from negative feedback, and resist meaningful change—even when it's essential.

Now, in Part Two, we shift gears from individual blind spots to organizational roadblocks, exploring why dealership cultures can amplify these patterns, turning personal tendencies into collective habits that are twice as difficult to break.

Recognizing and confronting this internal blind spot is critical to breaking free from the cycle of unmet expectations. If individual psychology makes it hard to self-diagnosethis problem, organizational dynamics can make it twice as tricky. In companies (like automotive dealerships), group culture and systems often reinforce doing the same thing:

“We’ve Always Done It This Way” – Cultural Inertia

 Many organizations develop a culture that devours new strategies before they can take hold. A famous business adage (often attributed to Peter Drucker) says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If the prevailing mindset in a dealership is traditional and change-averse, even a well-planned new process might get ignored in favor of the familiar ways. People align with the dominant norms, and questioning the status quo may be subtly or overtly discouraged. Over time, this cultural inertia means the company keeps running the same playbook, even as market conditions shift. Leaders might announce new goals, but employees quietly continue with business-as-usual, expecting different results to magically materialize. In such an environment, everyone knows the mantra about not repeating mistakes – yet the unwritten rule is to stick with what’s comfortable. This disconnect between knowing and doing is often internal, not due to external factors. (In fact, one Forbes analysis noted that companies often are “doomed to repeat mistakes” because their culture undercuts their strategy and they have the “memory of a senile goldfish” when it comes to past lessons learned.)

Groupthink and Lack of Dissent

When an entire team falls into a single mindset, it’s hard for anyone to point out the need for change. Groupthink is a well-documented phenomenon where the drive for consensus suppresses critical thinking. In a dealership setting, if everyone from the GM to sales managers share the same long-held beliefs (“online sales won’t work here” or “our way of prospecting is fine”), then collectively they may reinforce each other’s faulty expectations. As one high-performance coach noted, biases and “blind spots” can become collective – groups may even go into “collective denial and willful blindness”.

An example of disastrous groupthink was Nokia’s downfall: the company’s leadership became so committed to its existing strategy that they ignored clear signs the market had changed. Their biases placed blindfolds over their eyes, preventing them from seeing the “impending storm” of smartphones, and they rationalized away negative outcomes. Nokia’s team fell victim to escalation of commitment – continuing to rationalize their decisions and investments in the face of increasingly negative outcomes, rather than alter course.

In hindsight, the pattern of repeating old strategies while expecting to regain market leadership seems obviously “insane,” but from inside the group, it felt justified at the time. The lesson for any organization is that an insular group mentality can make crazy repetition feel perfectly normal.

Organizational Memory (or Lack Thereof)

Organizations often fail to learn from past mistakes – or they learn, but then forget. There’s a fascinating study from the University of Texas at Austin examining 146 pharmaceutical firms, which found that companies fell into cycles of “learning and forgetting” after major errors. For instance, when a serious safety incident occurred, the company would initially tighten controls and change procedures (learning).

But as time passed without another incident, urgency faded and old habits crept back in – eventually leading to a repeat of similar mistakes (forgetting). Why does this happen? The researchers pointed to factors like employee turnover, where new people simply aren’t aware of past lessons, and complacency after periods of success or stability. A change in leadership can also reset the clock – a new leader might unknowingly reintroduce approaches that failed in the past. In short, if knowledge isn’t captured and passed on, an organization may have to re-learn the same hard lessons over and over.

Many dealerships suffer this: for example, a sales team might abandon a new CRM process after a few smooth months, slipping back into their old customer-tracking methods, until a problem or downturn reminds them why the new system existed in the first place. An organization with the “memory of a goldfish” is destined to repeat yesterday’s mistakes.

Misaligned Targets and Incentives

Sometimes companies keep pushing the same ineffective behaviors because they’re measuring the wrong things. If a dealership sets targets that emphasize activity over results (e.g., number of calls made, or cars on the lot, without tracking conversion or customer satisfaction), employees may keep doing those activities to hit the numbers, assuming eventually it will pay off.

They expect different results without changing the fundamental approach, because the metrics give a false sense of progress. In such cases, everyone might quote the “insanity” proverb about some other aspect of the business, yet remain blind to how their own KPI-driven routines fit that definition. Ensuring that you have the right goals – ones that truly reflect success – is crucial. Otherwise, organizations can fall into a pattern of “we met the targets but missed the point,” quarter after quarter.

Leadership and Accountability

 Leaders play a huge role. A leader who is closed off to criticism or convinced of one “tried and true” method can set the whole tone for repetition. If the general manager of a dealership insists on the same sales script or marketing plan that’s yielded mediocre results, his team will likely follow suit (and hesitate to speak up).

Moreover, if there’s no accountability or reflection enforced from the top – say, no regular review of what is not working – then the default human biases take over by default. On the other hand, enlightened leaders who admit mistakes and encourage learning create an environment where doing something different is valued over doing the comfortable same. As we’ll discuss, creating that kind of culture is key to breaking out of the cycle.

This is Part 2 of a 3 Part Series - Stay tuned for Part 3!