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Leadership
Adaptability
What does it take to challenge the impossible?
Physician and Paralympian William Tan on why a winning performance should serve a greater purpose....
Physician and Paralympian William Tan reflects on challenging expectations, learning to adapt, and why a winning performance should serve a greater purpose.
Rapid read
- Challenging limitations starts with questioning assumptions. This means looking beyond the expectations others place on us and being willing to reconsider our own beliefs about what is possible.
- Resilience is not simply about refusing to give up. Adaptability, humility, and the ability to draw on unexpected experiences can be just as important as determination when circumstances change.
- Success can breed overconfidence, making it harder to recognize vulnerability or accept help. Winning performance ultimately means using personal achievement to open possibilities for others and create a lasting impact.
What does it take to achieve something that others consider impossible?
Determination and perseverance are often celebrated as the qualities that allow people to overcome extraordinary obstacles. But resilience is more complicated than simply refusing to quit.
Progress sometimes means challenging others’ expectations, and sometimes questioning our own assumptions. It also requires knowing when to change course – and understanding why a goal matters in the first place.
I have spent much of my life challenging what others believed was possible. Yet in February 2023, I found myself alone in Antarctica, struggling through the snow in my wheelchair and seriously considering giving up.
A four-letter word
It was the first leg of an extraordinary challenge: seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. The temperature was around –28°C, the other competitors had disappeared into the distance, and every push of my wheelchair required enormous effort.
That’s when a forbidden four-letter word entered my mind: quit.
There were plenty of reasons to stop. I was 66, the conditions were punishing, and I had already set a world record in 2007 by completing seven marathons across seven continents in 26 days. What was left to prove?
But I had also committed to raising money for seven charities. How could I explain abandoning that commitment? I had come too far to give up now.
Challenging expectations
When I contracted polio as a young child in Singapore, I was paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors suggested that my parents consider institutional care, but they refused.
We were a poor family. My father sold fried bananas on the streets, and there were seven children to support. Yet my parents saw possibilities where others saw limitations. “You may be paralyzed from the waist down, but you’re not paralyzed in the brain or you’re not paralyzed in your arms,” they told me.
They wanted me to learn to walk with leg braces and crutches, something I resisted fiercely. The metal braces hurt, the crutches caused blisters under my arms, and I was frightened of falling. There were days when I refused to practice.
My eldest sister, Lily, encouraged me to keep trying. If half an hour seemed too much, perhaps I could manage 10 minutes. Day after day, we practiced along the corridors of our apartment building until I could walk independently.
My parents challenged the limits others placed on me, while Lily helped me confront my own reluctance. It was my first lesson in self-disruption: the willingness to move beyond what feels comfortable.
A professor initially reconsidered offering me a research opportunity because of my disability. He later admitted that he had seen the wheelchair before seeing the person.
Seeing beyond the wheelchair
At school, I decided I wanted to become a doctor. But when I applied to medical school, I was told that medicine was not a suitable profession for someone using a wheelchair.
Instead, I studied life sciences at university before joining the civil service, where I worked for eight years to help support my siblings’ education. My ambitions in medicine and science remained, however, and I eventually secured a Fulbright scholarship to Harvard and a Chevening scholarship to Oxford, pursuing further studies in physiology and related fields.
Even then, I encountered prejudice. A professor initially reconsidered offering me a research opportunity because of my disability. He later admitted that he had seen the wheelchair before seeing the person.
Years later, while working at the Mayo Clinic, I encountered a doctor who also used a wheelchair. Seeing someone practice medicine despite the very limitations that had been used to exclude me encouraged me to apply again. This time, I was successful, gaining admission to medical school 21 years after my first rejection.
During clinical training, another obstacle emerged when my wheelchair was considered unsuitable for the operating theater. Rather than abandon the placement, I worked with hospital engineers to develop a wheeled standing frame that allowed me to participate.
These obstacles often had less to do with my abilities than with other people’s assumptions. It makes me wonder how much talent organizations overlook because someone does not fit their expectations.
Success can make us overconfident, encouraging us to rely on approaches that have worked before rather than recognize when we need help or a different perspective.
When confidence becomes a limitation
Overcoming so many obstacles gave me enormous confidence, perhaps too much. I had become accustomed to challenging the impossible and finding a way through.
Then, during the Paris Marathon in April 2009, I began experiencing unexplained bleeding. I had planned to propose to my partner, Stephanie, after the race, but something was clearly wrong. Back in Singapore, medical examinations revealed that I had stage-four leukemia. The prognosis was nine to 12 months.
Initially, I considered declining treatment, preferring to spend whatever time remained with my family. But then children at the Children’s Cancer Foundation, where I had volunteered for years, reminded me of the advice I had so often given them: never give up.
Hearing those words from children facing cancer themselves was humbling. It made me reconsider, particularly when I realized that surviving cancer might help me become a better physician, able to understand patients’ experiences in ways that medical training alone could not teach.
I underwent chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. In October 2026, I celebrated 16 years of remission.
My illness reminded me that I was not invulnerable. Success can make us overconfident, encouraging us to rely on approaches that have worked before rather than recognize when we need help or a different perspective.
When pushing harder isn’t the answer
Back in Antarctica, determination alone was getting me nowhere. My wheelchair’s smaller front wheels kept sinking into the snow, while my heavy clothing restricted my movement.
As I struggled to make progress, I remembered a technique I had learned from wheelchair dancing. By balancing on the larger rear wheels, I could keep the smaller wheels from sinking into the snow. Removing some of my heavy clothing and gloves also gave me greater freedom of movement. It was an unlikely solution, but I began moving faster.
The challenges continued when my racing wheelchair was damaged during air travel, forcing me to complete the remaining marathons in my everyday chair. Despite these setbacks, I finished all seven marathons across seven continents in seven days.
The experience reminded me of something I have learned repeatedly throughout my life: “It’s not the best who wins, but people who adapt.” Perseverance matters, but so does the willingness to rethink our approach and draw on experiences that might initially seem unrelated to the problem at hand.
It is not simply about how far we can go or what we can achieve. It is about what becomes possible for other people because of what we choose to do.
What makes a winning performance?
For me, the reason to keep going increasingly lies beyond personal achievement. My endurance challenges have raised money for charitable causes. My experience with leukemia has influenced how I care for cancer patients. And through the Goodwill Charity Clinic, I have sought to extend healthcare to people in need, including migrant workers in Singapore.
When I was a child, my parents challenged the assumptions others had made about my future. Their belief opened possibilities I could not yet imagine, and much of my life since has been spent trying to do the same, first for myself and increasingly for others.
That is what orchestrating a winning performance means to me. It is not simply about how far we can go or what we can achieve. It is about what becomes possible for other people because of what we choose to do.
Authors
This article is inspired by a keynote session at IMD’s signature Orchestrating Winning Performance program, Singapore (2026), which brings together executives from diverse sectors and geographies for a week of intense learning and sharing with IMD faculty and business experts.
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