BRENDAN Rodgers was once credited with saying: “You can live without water for many days, but you can’t live for a second without hope”. We got the sentiment, albeit possibly a little cliched.
Jim Collins in his book on leadership, ‘Good to Great’ took a slightly different view. He outlined what he referred to as ‘The Stockdale Paradox’. This sprang from the story of James Stockdale, an American soldier (and one time vice-presidential candidate) who had been captured during the Vietnam war.
Conditions as a prisoner of war were horrific, brutal and unforgiving, a living nightmare for those enduing them. Stockdale, relating how he stayed alive during that time, referred to both hope and realism. Vision and pragmatism.
Stockdale advised that while it was okay to keep a long term vision of being released and going home, that had to be balanced with acknowledging, facing and managing the day to day realities of the situation. Someday you will get home, but right now you have to live in the present and deal with it.
Clinging only to the hope that you would one day be free and assuming that hope alone would see you through was foolhardy.
Stockdale was asked directly “Who didn’t make it out?” His answer was “Oh, that’s easy. The Optimists”. They were the ones who believed “We’re going to be out by Christmas”. Christmas came and went; they were still imprisoned. “We’re going to be out by Easter”. Then Easter came and went; they were still imprisoned. Then Thanksgiving, and so on; the pattern kept repeating. “And they died of a broken heart,” Stockdale concluded.
How many management seminars, gurus and books talk incessantly about the need for positive thinking only? They have no time for anything negative. Even considering the downsides, the pitfalls and the harsh realities of a situation gets you labelled as unhelpful.
In Stockdale’s view however, failing to do that and relying only on wide screen hope is foolhardy and fatal. You had to confront, accept and deal with the harsh reality of day to day survival in a POW camp to survive, not just assume things would magically get better by some prescribed day in the future.
The point Collins and Stockdale were making is that while it’s good to have an overarching positive plan or viewpoint, you need to also address the reality of your daily situation, and that translates to business as well.
If you are engaged on a project for example and things are not working right now, maybe it’s not on schedule, or mistakes are being made then confront them. Work towards fixing them in the present, and they will then be part of the solution that ultimately leads to the desired outcome.
If a ship is allowed to drift off course a little every day without correction, you will increasingly get further from your destination and the harder it is to correct course. Confronting problems at an early stage could even flag up that the project is simply not viable in reality and it’s better to cut losses right there and then, rather than rely on unfounded optimism and end up wasting time, energy and resources over the long term.
If you hope an employee who is not succeeding right now will work out okay in the end then you need to deal with it contemporaneously, not leave it to chance. Manage them in the here and now. Things left untreated will typically get worse, not better. The more standards drop, the more mistakes happen and the more chance there is that the end result (a happy, productive employee, contributing to the success of the company) will not materialise.
It’s easier to correct course at the time than at some distant future point. If an employee is in a probationary period, use that time to help them develop. However if they continually fail to meet expectations, or show no signs of progression then don’t be afraid to confront the reality that they just may not be suitable. You don’t give up on them, you put a process in place to help, but ultimately you may be forced to face harsh realities.
Just like if a football player is making mistakes in training; you stop and fix during the session, not at the end of the season when the bad habits may have become ingrained and tolerated. The same applies in work.
So next time you are involved in a project and you sense that things are going slightly awry remember the lessons from Collins and Stockdale “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.”
:: Barry Shannon is head of HR at STATSports
