![\"Sun](\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Sun_And_Barbed_Wire.png\")
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(Tom: I cannot imagine more appropriate story to help us develop the right mindset to guide us to personal and collective victory over the forces that would suppress us at this time.)<\/p>\n
The Stockdale Paradox is a concept, along with its component concept Confront the Brutal Facts, developed in the book Good to Great. Productive change begins when you confront the brutal facts. Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the “Stockdale Paradox”: you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.<\/p>\n
Excerpts from Good to Great<\/p>\n
Every good-to-great company faced significant adversity along the way to greatness, of one sort or another. \u2026 In every case, the management team responded with a powerful psychological duality. On the one hand, they stoically accepted the brutal facts of reality. On the other hand, they maintained an unwavering faith in the endgame, and a commitment to prevail as a great company despite the brutal facts. We came to call this duality the Stockdale Paradox.<\/p>\n
The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in the \u201cHanoi Hilton\u201d prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner\u2019s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. \u2026<\/p>\n
You can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending part of an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written his paper on Stockdale, who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch. In preparation, I read In Love and War, the book Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years.<\/p>\n
As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak\u2014the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then, it dawned on me: \u201cHere I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I\u2019m getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI never lost faith in the end of the story,\u201d he said, when I asked him. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, \u201cWho didn\u2019t make it out?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, that\u2019s easy,\u201d he said. \u201cThe optimists.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe optimists? I don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said, now completely confused, given what he\u2019d said a hundred meters earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, \u2018We\u2019re going to be out by Christmas.\u2019 And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they\u2019d say, \u2018We\u2019re going to be out by Easter.\u2019 And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, \u201cThis is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end\u2014which you can never afford to lose\u2014with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.\u201d<\/p>\n
To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: \u201cWe\u2019re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!\u201d<\/p>\n