Video - Robert Craven on the Stockdale Paradox

VIDEO: 8:19

AUTHOR: Robert Craven

Confronting Reality is Vital to Success: The Stockdale Paradox

It is lonely at the top!

In lockdown, agency leaders find it tough to keep up their game face. Too much granular information, too much uncertainty, too much fear. Never mind all the other pressures of living in lockdown.

How do we manage all the negative thoughts and yet stay cheerful?

There are two similar principles which will help you understand how you can and in fact ought to hold two conflicting ideas at the same time.

• Stockdale Paradox: hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

• Frankl’s Tragic Optimism

If these principles ‘worked’ in Prisoner of War camps, then we can learn from them for our own situations.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:06 

In this soundbite, I'd like to talk about why confronting reality is vital to success. The number of ways of putting this especially when we're working in difficult times about how we, how we recognise it's a marathon and not a sprint, how we recognise it's like riding a bike, you need to granularly look at the road coming underneath the tire, but at the same time, you need to be looking at a mountain. It's up ahead of you. But I'd like to talk about two principles.  

Robert Craven  00:43 

The first one is the Stockdale principle Stockdale principle is made famous Stockdale paradox is made famous in Good to Great by Jim Collins. And essentially, the Stockdale principle or Stockdale paradox, is the idea of hoping for the best. But acknowledging and preparing for the worst. So the idea is that you're hoping for the best, but you're preparing or you're acknowledging the worst. So especially true when we're in difficult times in business, oh, my god, the business might go bust, oh, my God, if we're lucky, we might survive. And we might still be trading in 18 months time. How, you know, this idea of cognitive dissonance is that you can't hold two conflicting ideas in your mind at the same time, you can't be angry, and be in love with the baby, you can't be you get the idea of conflicting ideas, you can't believe that the world is flat, but at the same time, believe the world is round. It does does your head and if you're trying to try to work with two conflicting ideas.  

Robert Craven  02:05 

So Stockdale was in prisoner of war camp in Vietnam, he's in for seven years he survived. And his point was that the people who really suffered were the people who thought they're going to be out by Christmas. And the ones who succeeded are the ones who pulled through, or the ones who were lucky enough to recognise the grim reality of what was going on that might come in tomorrow and might, like kill them, quite literally. And that might torture them, I might be reading, but at the same time, they might be home for Christmas, but they don't know when. And in fact, the idea of being home for Christmas at some point meant that people would actually have something to hold on to. But this is not the idea of being old business is going to be fine. Ignoring the reality of what's going on today. So let me just read from from from this because I think it's relevant. Okay. This is Stockdale speaking to Jim Collins. Who didn't make it out. Oh, that's easy. He said the optimists. The optimists, I don't understand. I said now completely confused, given what he took 100 metres earlier, they'd been walking the optimist over, 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 he's do it calm and used to go, and then Thanksgiving, and I'm going to be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. Okay. It's just too much pain. Yeah. To have this unbridled optimism which consistently disappoints Now, anyone who runs a business totally recognised the idea of, we're going to launch a website, oh my god. We're going to run an event. Oh, my God, it felt we're going to publish a book. Oh my god, it failed the, you know, the Big Dipper running a business and there's lots of cartoons about that. No, but what the Stockdale paradox is, is, is recognise the grim reality of what may actually happen, but also have an optimistic view that one day you're going to get out of it, and that actually works. Now the other person has a similar concept that people often use is Viktor Frankl in a breathtaking book called In Search of meaning, which is also a prisoner of war. He won. He was in Auschwitz. And he created a new psychotherapy psychotherapeutic approach while he was and he spends most of his time watching, watching his fellow prisoner And the interesting thing with him is he, he recognised the power of the line, you recognise that, that they could take everything away from him, but he couldn't take his mind away from him. That was the kind of the big piece. But also he had a concept which was called tragic optimism, which is unbelievably similar to the Stockdale ideas, let me just read read from that, okay, the death rate in the week between Christmas 44, a New Year's 45 increased in the count on all previous experience. In his opinion, the explanation for this increase did not lie in the hard working conditions, or the deterioration of our food supplies, or a change of wealth or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the prisoners had lived in the naive hope that they will be home again by Christmas, as the time drew nearer, and there was no encouraging news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them. This had a dangerous influence on their powers of resistance, and a great number of them died. So tragic optimism. So it's about holding to country ideas at the same time, confronting the reality, confronting the reality that at the same time, hoping for the best, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst.  

Robert Craven  06:36 

So what does this tell us about stuff right now? I think in business, what we have to do is be absolutely clear about the reality that we face and what may actually happen, what may actually happen is we may, if we're not able to raise the money, if we're not able to get the customers quick enough, if we're not able to get the money from the government quick enough, if we're not able to get the website up quick enough, if we're not able to change quick enough, if the customers don't come back, if the lockdown goes on further, if the town gets closed down, if the industry isn't turned around, we need to understand what that means. And the consequences of that for whether we continue holding, owning our house, kids going to school, and so on and so forth. At the same time, we need to have this this optimism about how we can pull it through. Because it simply is this is not a sprint, it's a marathon. And at the core of it, alluding to Frank is this is this is a mindset thing. This is a long, tough, hard game. This is all lots of body blows, and you need to be mentally agile and mentally fit about that. And that's why you know, in growing digital agency, that first chapter is online to set. In fact, in some senses, the only chapter is on mindset. So right now we need to master everything to confront the realism but have an optimistic outlook. Thank you very much.