Research shows that two of the defining characteristics of Top 1% leadership and organisational performance are the rare, closely related abilities:
to accept and embrace paradoxes, which are often deeply discomfiting. A paradox occurs when at least two seemingly incompatible facts are true simultaneously
to accept the brutal realities of a situation but hold on tightly to an unbreakable belief that you can and you will prevail in the end, no matter how long it takes or what you must endure. This is the ‘Stockdale Paradox’, a term coined by Jim Collins and used by his research team in ‘Good to Great’ (2001) for reasons I’ll explain for those who do not know it.
I have been keenly aware this week of the vital importance of these essential truths, both in global human affairs and personally. This blog explains why. I hope it helps you to understand and apply them.
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It’s been another unpleasant and worrying week in international news. Two particular events have struck me.
The dreadful news came in yesterday that everyone had feared. The Islamic State released a video of the beheading of Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. Japan is in deep shock. Goto had gone to Syria to try to secure the release of another Japanese prisoner, Haruna Yukawa, who was beheaded last week.
On Friday Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg released the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)’s annual report with a gloomy prognosis that Western relations with Russia are at their worst for 30 years. Interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC Fiona Hill, an expert on Vladimir Putin’s Russia, gave a chilling insight into his mentality. Essentially Russia remains paranoid from generation to generation about the West’s intentions, thanks to Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and Hitler’s in 1941. To put this in context 32 million Soviets died in World War II. This is equivalent to wiping out a full 50% of the UK population in just 4 years of brutal warfare. By comparison the Russians feel that for us lily-livered Westerners World War II was a walk in the park.
Ms Hill explained that historical documents now available from Russia and Eastern Europe confirm that in 1983, when the US sought to deploy Pershing nuclear missiles in West Germany, the Russians believed the West was planning a pre-emptive nuclear strike, even though Western governments thought this irrational fear so preposterous that they dismissed it out of hand. The result was that we came far closer to nuclear Armageddon in Europe than anyone understood at the time. This was horrifying stupidity on a cataclysmic scale by Western governments led by Ronald Reagan and the much vaunted Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Their gung-ho rhetoric and hardball tactics apparently almost destroyed us.
According to Ms Hill there is a serious risk the West will repeat the same mistake for the same reasons. Putin is convinced we are hell-bent on overthrowing him and interprets the extension of the EU and NATO into Eastern Europe as acts of naked aggression. Ms Hill says his defiance of the West and illegal adventures in Ukraine are fuelled as much by paranoia as by imperialism. The scariest thing of all, she says, is that Western governments just don’t get it!! The dramatic increase over the last 12 months in incidents where Russian military aircraft make unauthorised incursions into Western airspace – in the latest two of them brazenly flew the length of the English Channel last week – is intended to probe how serious Western intentions are.
Personally it has been a remarkable week. Last Sunday I posted a blog called Why was Churchill so great? The title certainly caused a stir – over 33,000 have read it at the time of writing today’s blog and it has proved controversial. Prior to writing it I confess I had not understood the depth of hostility towards Churchill, particularly in India and in some sections of the British population. Antipathy towards him from Ireland and France came as less of a surprise.
The post has drawn over 750 likes on LinkedIn, over 800 shares, and over 250 comments, most of them complementary. However some people took me to task for supposed bias/hero worship, and failure to quote a balanced range of historical sources and point out Churchill’s mistakes and ‘crimes’. I said in response that I wrote the blog to reflect on two programmes – one on radio and one on TV about the Spitfire WW2 fighter plane that didn’t mention Churchill as far as I recall. It was a blog written to inspire people, not a historical treatise or biography, and I am a businessman, not an academic. But no matter; I had touched on a raw nerve and my critics’ ire was aroused. One launched a sustained, vitriolic personal attack on me, making numerous slanderous assertions about my personality, supposed racism and extreme politics! Unfortunately he did so under the banner of his employer, and I have drawn it to their attention and to LinkedIn’s.
All three subjects I’ve mentioned – the killing of Kenji Goto, the heightened tensions with Russia and the reaction to my Churchill blog highlight the problems posed by paradoxes and uncomfortable, brutal realities. These problems are an acid test of our character and moral courage.
The vast majority of right-thinking people would condemn outright the despicable, barbaric actions of Islamic State. The vast majority of Muslims would denounce its twisted ideology as an affront to the Prophet. But how many of them are prepared to say so publicly and unequivocally? That takes courage and a willingness to risk condemnation in your own community. Most people are afraid and prefer to keep out of ‘trouble’. Many are seduced by the easy and morally reprehensible way out – if Christian cultures did not apparently oppress Muslims these things would not happen, they say.
People in the democratic West and especially in former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe are afraid of Russian aggression and cannot comprehend that the Russians’ behaviour is largely driven by the fact that they are actually more afraid of us than we are of them! Are we prepared to start from that true premise, think through its profound consequences, and develop radically different, emotionally intelligent strategies for tackling the ‘Russian problem’ with safer and more sustainable solutions than simply ‘facing down the bully’, though we must continue to demonstrate implacable strength in defence to the Russians?
I have resolved to look objectively at the evidence of Churchill’s political behaviour in India, where my critics claim he was personally responsible for genocide, and at some of the contradictory accounts of his attitudes towards, and efforts on behalf of ordinary working people in the UK. This will allow me to reach a better-informed conclusion on whether there are unpalatable facts about him. As a deeply grateful, freedom-loving Englishman – or should that be jingoistic, nostalgic, racist, imperialist, toffee-nosed, privileged, boarding school Tory bigot as one of my critics suggests?! - I appear to have been kept in blissful ignorance – or should that be deliberately buried my blind, sycophantic, puerile, hero-worshipping head in the sand?!
I believe that by his moral courage, inspiration of the British people and defiance of Hitler in 1940 Churchill saved not only Britain, but the whole of Europe, from decades of evil Nazi tyranny and its Jewish and Gypsy populations from annihilation. But I love the truth and critical, objective, factual thinking (Aristotle’s ‘Logos’) most of all, even if sometimes it hurts and may even shatter my illusions! So I'm braced for the worst, but only if I read about it from dispassionate, rigorous and balanced historical scholars.
The Stockdale Paradox
Jim Collins gave this name to a profound piece of wisdom which he learnt from Vice Admiral James B Stockdale. Collins was on the faculty at Stanford Business School in California in the late-1980s when he met Stockdale, an honorary Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University.
Stockdale, a US Navy pilot, was shot down and captured by the North Vietnamese in 1965 during the Vietnam War. He remained in captivity until 1973, the highest ranking US officer held by the North Vietnamese. He was regularly kept in solitary confinement and subjected to such brutal torture on dozens of occasions that his body became permanently disfigured. Despite the desperate bleakness of his situation he always believed that one day he would be released and return to normal life with his wife and children. He and his wife wrote a book called ‘In Love and War’ that movingly chronicled their respective lives during that terrible 8 years.
Stockdale as a POW (1965-73)
Collins learnt that the secret of Stockdale’s survival was that he combined this undiminished hope for eventual release, which he said he could never afford to lose, otherwise he would have died, with an acceptance that his current situation was likely to last indefinitely. He faced up to it, and instead concentrated his energies on small matters that he could influence rather than his freedom, which he could not. He devoted himself to the welfare of his fellow POWs. For instance he knew that no-one could withstand torture indefinitely, so he developed a system whereby after so long prisoners could divulge certain pieces of information.
Many of the prisoners sadly died because they could not come to terms with their situation. As Stockdale put it they would say “We’ll be out by Christmas!” Christmas would come and Christmas would go, and then they would say “We’ll be out by Easter!” That didn’t happen either. In the end, as Stockdale told Collins, many of them died of a ‘broken heart’ – they gave up.
Years later Collins’ research team were debating some of the characteristic, distinctive behaviours of the 11 ‘Good to Great’ companies they had identified. As they discussed it Collins suddenly realised it bore all the hallmarks of Stockdale’s behaviour during his 8 years in captivity. These companies confronted their situations with brutal honesty and recognised there were no magic wands or quick fixes. But they always continued to believe that they would, in the end, find the solutions and move into better times.
I have found the Stockdale Paradox a priceless maxim to guide my own life since I first discovered it 9 years ago. Also the basic understanding of neuroscience which I have gleaned in the last few months has convinced me that the survival and further evolution of the human race depend on it. If you want to know more read my blogsHow the brain works and why you should know and Why selflessness is good business.
Our primitive brains (aka our ‘chimps’ – see the excellent ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Dr Steve Peters) cannot deal with the messy, nuanced realities of truth. Instead they fall back on simplistic ‘certainties’ that are only a tiny fragment of reality. The more we feel threatened the more dogmatic these ‘certainties’ become. You see this in the behaviour of extremists such as Islamic State, the attitudes of Russia and the West towards one another, and in the aggressive responses from some people to my Churchill blog last week. To feel a debt of gratitude to Churchill is not to deny any other, unpalatable truths about him, and to say that he was a complex character who made serious mistakes is not to condone bad things he may have done which many people, including me, may not previously have learned of. Hence the reason I intend to find out - I am not afraid of the truth!
The bottom line is this. The truth can sometimes hurt, but seeking it earnestly, and with an entirely open mind, is the essence of critical thinking and therefore the key to human advancement. This holds true in every aspect of life, including business. That is why for example I advocate getting hold of as much raw, unfiltered customer feedback as possible to guide your business strategy and actions. The vast majority of human behaviour may hide behind a pretence of logic, but the brutal reality is that it is driven by our primitive brains and is self-delusional.
So learn to love paradoxes, especially the Stockdale Paradox! It is only the most sophisticated, most recent part of our brain, the neo-cortex (upper brain) that gives us the capability to grasp them.
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Mark Ashton
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