Legacy gives your brand weight. But too often, it becomes a crutch.

Rankin Carroll put it well: confidence in your history can stifle curiosity. That tension—between consistency and curiosity—is one every brand leader needs to manage. Ignore it, and you risk becoming irrelevant while standing still.

Consistency matters. It's what builds trust, equity, and long-term value. You want the brand to feel familiar, recognizable, solid.

But curiosity is what keeps a brand alive. It forces the organization to stay culturally attuned, creatively energized, and strategically alert. Without it, legacy calcifies.

Here's the balance that works:

• Lock in the non-negotiables. Visual identity, tone, values—these are your constants. Don’t dilute them.

• Interrogate the world around you. Consumer behavior shifts. Cultural expectations shift. Competitors evolve. Technology opens new doors. You don’t have to chase trends—but you can’t ignore them either.

• Experiment with purpose. Curiosity without discipline is chaos. Discipline without curiosity is obsolescence. Set clear hypotheses. Measure impact. Learn and iterate.

• Adapt without losing the core. When the brand moves, it should still feel like you. If it doesn’t, you’ve lost the thread.

Legacy brands—especially those with institutional status—are most at risk. The pressure to preserve what’s worked can drown out the signals that it’s no longer working.

This isn’t about reinvention for reinvention’s sake. It’s about staying sharp enough to see where relevance is drifting—and moving fast enough to keep pace.

Legacy is a byproduct of sustained relevance. You don’t protect it by standing still. You protect it by proving, again and again, why it matters.