Stockdale Paradox

Like a lot of people, my only knowledge of Jim Stockdale was as the slightly eccentric running mate of Ross Perot in his ill-fated run for the presidency. I was blithely unaware of his eight-year stay in a POW camp in Vietnam. I can't ever pretend to comprehend the suffering he endured (I can barely even watch The Deer Hunter) and it feels trivializing to compare that experience to the business world.

However, hardly a week goes by that I don't end up relaying Jim Collins' discussion of the Stockdale Paradox.

Since so much of what I do involves changing not just the tactical activities of a company in building processes, but drilling into the very core of the company to change attitudes and do the impossible, I often end up working with discouraged, fatalistic employees who gave up trying to change things years ago, and doubt our ability to fix the broken. So this statement from the late Admiral really speaks to me:

“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said, when I asked him. “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.”

Let's just not reflect on the fact that I'm comparing my career to being in a POW camp.

Nothing frustrates me more than people who have given up. People who put their own interests ahead of the company, or people who have different ideas of direction for the company can be dealt with in a logical, analytical fashion. But the disgruntled employee, tired of fighting battles he never wins, is unwilling to go through that pain again. He shuts down, and in shutting down, destroys his vision and the hopes of those around him.

This reflects passion displaced -- it takes emotional engagement and pride to care this much. I've talked to a lot of people who think that such a person is lost; that the company should cut the cord and let him go. While I have obvious concerns about the demotivated employee's affect on his coworkers, I think that few things would be more wasteful than losing that much passion. Nothing is so rewarding as seeing these people come back to life, once these problems which have been plaguing him for years suddenly begin to clear. He no longer doubts his own ability, and no longer strikes out in anger at those around him.

“This is a very important lesson. 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.”