“Defending the status quo is what kills companies.” That insight from Rich Teerlink and Lee Ozley’s More Than a Motorcycle rings just as true now as it did when they wrote it in 2000. They described how Harley-Davidson didn’t wait for a crisis to change—they transformed their culture right after a financial turnaround when the company was being praised for its success. Most would have stayed the course, but Harley knew that holding onto the status quo is the surest way to fail.

In today’s fast-moving world, companies that cling to “what’s always worked” run a serious risk of being overtaken by more nimble, customer-focused competitors. The names of companies that didn’t evolve—Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia, and much of the music industry—are stark reminders of what happens when businesses fail to adapt to new realities.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking. We spend such a large portion of our days reacting to issues flying at us from all directions that we can easily lose sight of where we’re headed and why we’re going there. We’re so busy that we don’t have time to think, and failing to allot time to think is ultimately counterproductive. Taking time (and even scheduling time) to reflect on past actions and consider future courses of action is more important than we often realize.

Consider this quote from former Intel exec Dov Frohman in his book Leadership the Hard Way:

“Every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. Until you do so, you will never be able to develop the detachment required to identify long-term threats to the organization or the flexibility to move quickly to take advantage of random opportunities as they emerge. Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such  free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem.”

“We tried that before and it didn’t work.”

Man, I’ve heard that phrase a lot in my life. And truth be told, I’ve spoken it more than I care to admit.

But when something fails once in the past (or even more than once) should it be doomed forever?

I was once lucky enough to hear futurist Bob Johansen speak, and he said something that really stuck with me:

“Almost nothing that happens in the future is new; it’s almost always something that has been tried and failed in the past.”