BELLA The Stockdale Paradox
A mindset for COVID-19
Bleak sometimes, isn’t it?
One month of lockdown down, if you will, and chances are the novelty of spending each identical day learning new yoga poses, rediscovering Duolingo and baking your 53rd banana loaf is wearing off. “Oui, exactement,” I hear you cry in a cacophony of terrible, app-formed accents. Reality is setting in. This is what life looks like now and, unfortunately for us, it’s impossible to know when normality will return, or what shape it’ll take when it does.
Now, I don’t often look to corporate strategy in times of dread (which, as an aside, is exactly the kind of thing that someone who does this would say), but perhaps it’s not a bad place to start. Whilst working on my Masters assignments, I came across a YouTube video I want to share with you (link down below).
The video is about the Stockdale Paradox, devised by Jim Collins and named after his late colleague James Stockdale. His story is one of great courage, tragedy and challenge.
As a Vice Admiral in the Vietnam War, Stockdale was on a mission when his Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, a fighter jet with a top speed of more than 670mph, was struck by enemy fire. With the jet completely disabled, Stockdale had no choice but to eject and parachute into a nearby village. There he was captured and taken to Hỏa Lò Prison, dubbed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’. Stockdale was kept in the camp for around eight years, never knowing whether he would later be set free, nor when he might be tortured. He was finally released in February 1973.
Flash forward twenty or so years, and Stockdale is teaching ancient Stoicism at Stanford. On one of their occasional campus walks, Jim Collins can’t help but ask him “How did you deal with it, the not knowing?”
Stockdale pauses, astonishingly replies “I never doubted that not only I would get out, but also that I would turn the experience into the defining event of my life.”
And when Collins asks Stockdale who didn’t make it out? “Oh, that's easy,” he says, “the optimists, the ones who always said ‘We’ll be out by Christmas.’ They suffered from a broken heart.”
Collins was instantly struck by this juxtaposition. On the one hand, Stockdale had needed unwavering faith in his future, whilst on the other he had needed to confront the brutal reality of his present. And so, the Stockdale Paradox was born, detailed in Collins’ book Good to Great. Turns out, many successful companies have managers who embody the paradox.
So, while staying home is hardly the challenge that Stockdale faced, perhaps his mindset is pertinent, maybe even comforting.
Let’s accept any short-term bleak. Just remember that once this is all over, and it will be, we’ll rebuild.
Collins’ YouTube video -
Collins’ book - Good to Great
And for all you history geeks, Stockdale’s own book - In Love and War, co-written with his wife.
