Optimistic?

Leaders are supposed to look on the bright side, accentuate the positive, and inspire the troops. In “The Dark Side of Optimism” The Conference Board Review (January/February 2008) Susan Webber explains why positive thinking has become over-emphasized, raising barriers to realistic, objective assessment. While she may be exaggerating the pro-positive slant of current management practice, she is on solid ground in warning about the dangers of excessive optimism. She makes several recommendations to encourage cognitively healthy behavior:

• Senior management must take deliberate, concerted measures to signal that it is less interested in boosting morale than in the cold, hard truth
  
• Never shoot the messenger; show interest in the downside and the upside
  
• Shake up habits and procedures (scenario planning can help)
  
• Establish a house skeptic.

Jim Collins in his book Good To Great, describes what he calls The Stockdale Paradox (Chapter 4, pages 83–85). In an interview with Admiral Stockdale, Collins asked him to describe how he survived the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp for eight years during the Vietnam War. Here is what Stockdale said:

“I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

“Who didn’t make it out”?

“The optimists. They were the ones who said ‘we’re going to be out by Christmas’. And, Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. Then they died of a broken heart.”

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Take Away: You have to believe that you will come through all this. You must do everything you can to make that happen. But never let your belief cloud your confrontation with reality.