Good morning, Team! It’s Friday!

If you’ve read leadership books, you’ve heard how Jim Collins popularized what he called the Stockdale paradox. Frankly, I didn’t pay much attention to this story until recently.

Stockdale is Admiral James Stockdale. He was a prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton for 7 1/2 years, much of it in isolation. The prisoner of war camp with the sarcastic label was built by the French in the 19th century to house Vietnamese political prisoners. During the Vietnam war, they used it to detain U.S. pilots and servicemen. Conditions were miserable, with reports of torture, starvation, isolation and lack of medical care.

Collins portrays the Stockdale paradox like this:

“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 that might be.”

Faith and discipline. That simple and that difficult.

I’ve been fortunate to be involved in a few business performance turnarounds in my career. A company, a division or a department wasn’t performing anywhere close to their potential. The reasons for lack of performance were numerous and the effects were disastrous. I had one industry pundit tell me once, “Sometimes, you just have to let businesses fail.” That seemed irresponsible to me.

When faced with difficult situations, you can cower or you can rise to the occasion. I choose to rise. Stockdale chose to rise, to endure, to believe in himself and his future. We have all faced adversity of some kind but few have ever faced what Stockdale did…7 1/2 years in a POW camp!

No matter what, things could be worse and you can make things better. Grow your top line, identify and shrink your waste and grow your bottom line. Bring crystal clear solutions to the problems at hand. Be positive. Make hard choices quickly. Move forward and make good progress. Have faith in yourself and the people around you. Exercise discipline by showing up and standing tall every single day.

Have a blessed weekend!

Eric