Be Relentless

The picture is of an exhibit at the Summer Exhibition 2025 held at the Royal Academy of Art in London. It got me thinking.

We never discuss relentlessness a great deal. It’s the bigger sibling of persistence. It's a close cousin of Drive - the ability to keep going with energy and determination despite adversity - to push on. Drive is a valued attribute in people. Relentlessness can sometimes cut both ways.

In a negative sense, it signals a person who can't read the room and persists in pursuing an aim or pushing an opinion that is unachieveble or unwelcome. A quick scan of social media confirms that there are many relentless people around - continually pushing strongly held views and repeating their unwelcome mantra - whatever it may be. Relentless can be a synonym of tiresome.

More positively, relentlessness is your ally in achieving your objective. It's the ability to be incessant; to not give up; to persistently carry on pushing through.

Relentlessness gives elite althetes the belief to train and to practice. It gives campaigners-for-good a reason to belive they will eventually prevail. It gives parents of special needs kids the energy to keep pushing to achieve a brighter future for their offsprings. People who are relentless can be unstoppable.

Relentlessness is also the engine that underpins innovation. The path that leads to an innovative breakthrough, or a smart new piece of coding, or that new product is strewn with the bleached bones of numerous relentlessly pursued failures.

Relentlessness is the cunningly deployed weapon that organisations use to conquer resistance, to stay the course and to wear down opponents or objectors. Relentlessness can induce fatigue in others, it encourages others to just give up or give in.

Some of the best leaders retain an uncanny but laser-like focus on goals, or targets, or an unremitting insistence on the application of standards or enforcement of process. They embody the value of always pushing on. They are relentless in pushing towards goals or applying standards. Good leaders have this characteristic. The greatest of them know when to deploy it.... and, empathetically, when not to.

Relentlessness is a vital weapon in your toolkit - but use it wisely and positively. Check that it’s appropriate to unleash your relentlessness and avoid abrasion, but embrace irresistable, unstoppable. Be unrelenting in focussing on achieving your goals.