Stockdale Paradox
Good to Great, Jim Collins
Stockdale Paradox: You must retain faith that you can prevail to greatness in the end, while retaining the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality. What can you do today to create a pocket of greatness, despite the brutal facts of your environment?
Wow! Great time to be reminded of what hope, faith, determination and resolve can do for you, your family, your ministry or your company. Have you listened to the news lately? I’m pretty sure after 15 – 20 minutes of the devastation, the hopelessness, the fear and the forecast of even worse, you feel pretty sure you don’t have much of a chance. “Hog wash” as my grandmother use to say. The Good Book says we can do ALL things.
So, what do we do? Let’s turn off the news. Clear a few hours on your schedule. Find a few people you can trust that believe in you, maybe even some of your leadership team, and get to work! Here is the tasks:
Write your answers on your white board.
- What is it that we are trying to achieve? Where are we going?
- Where are we currently?
- If we are behind, how far behind are we?
- What do we need to produce or sell to catch up?
- What is currently working?
- What is not working at all?
- Make a list of things we might try or do different. Don’t judge the ideas, just brain dump.
- Pick 5 or 10 of the new, maybe out of the box, ideas. Unpack the details of each new idea. How can we do this? What will it costs? Who can own it? What results are we looking for? When will we start?
- Then, Try it. Measure it. Review results. Adjust. Retry. If it does not produce results, cancel and move to next idea.
I’m pretty sure that doing the same things but expecting better results is pretty close to insanity. So let’s not buy into all the negative and start working on a plan of how we can achieve in spite of what the news is telling us.
Stockdale Principle: What can you do today to create a pocket of greatness, despite the brutal facts of your environment?