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- Bend Reality “The Stockdale Paradox”
Maybe according to turtles, but not according to the Stockdale Paradox.
— Guy Lane : environmental scientist & author (@Guy_Jason_Lane)
12:31 PM • Apr 12, 2024
So I recently came across this thing called The Stockdale Paradox, To my surprise, it affects almost every founder out there. You need to believe that you will succeed no matter what but on the other hand you also need to accept the current reality as it is. It’s easier said than done. Let’s look into it.
Jim Stockdale
During the Vietnam War, Jim Stockdale was the highest-ranked officer, he says
“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.”
This is known as the Stockdale Paradox. During his time in prison do you know who died? The optimist. First thing first you have to know you will prevail in the end. For that, you need to have a big enough goal, something you will work on for the next 10 years.
Every startup is a 10-year overnight success and as a Founder you must believe in your vision cause you will be walking on fire for those 10 years. You must be working on something that you can devote 10 years to it. Startups are not book reports you can start and leave whenever you want.
Extreme Devotion
You need to be extremely devoted to the reality. You need to believe you will prevail but that’s not enough because as you know the optimist died during that time. If your business is not doing well you need to discuss with your team and come up with a plan for how will you handle this situation, you can just say you will prevail, a solid plan is a must. You have to accept reality as it is.
“Just because the full consequences haven't hit yet, doesn't mean there isn't a huge problem. It's as if someone jumped out of a window on the 42nd floor. As you go by the 20th floor you're still okay, but that doesn't mean you don't have a problem.”
Relying on Hopes
Hope isn’t a strategy, some founders intuitively know they need to bend reality but it needs to stop at the inner circle. You need a real conversation with yourself and your senior lieutenants. The worst lie in the world is when you lie to yourself, if you can’t acknowledge a problem you can’t fix it at all. The second worst kind of lie is when you lie to your closest, your investors, executives, and board members, believe it or not, it happens all the time.
The problem can be external or internal whether you might be running out of money, Your competitors might be beating you, Customers are churning, Operations might be failing, or your sales process just doesn't work, whatever it is, you need extreme devotion to truth. Discussing the matter with your team is a must but if you can’t do even that it means you have no management.
As a founder/manager, you are accountable, you need to hold your team to account, and only then you can win.
Stockdale Story
He survived eight years in prison, he was tortured 30 times, and his legs were broken twice despite all of that he survived but you know who died the optimist, they would lie to themselves that they would be out by Christmas and the Christmas would come and it would leave, they died from the broken heart, and that’s the most important lesson.
"The easiest way to solve a problem is to deny it exists."
"If you're the CEO of Geico you have the luxury of only focusing on reality. Big company leaders can do this, no problem. But if you are creating reality, you must both bend it and be able to see it as it is.
And this is why starting a company is far more difficult than becoming the CEO of an existing one."
This is hard founders have a very hard job, even harder than the CEO of a big company. As a big company CEO, you need to mostly manage things, they need a good study of reality. But founding CEOs need to be better than that, to bend reality first you need to see it. That’s a tough path to walk, before knowing about this I was also an optimist, but thankfully I didn’t learn it the hard way saving me so much time.