As you may remember, at the start of the semester, we were reading a book called from Good to Great by Jim Collins, which analyzed certain behaviors of GREAT companies over a period of 15 years.
Something that I had trouble understanding and didn’t quite got it well was the Stockdale Paradox. So I decided to further research about this topic and see what I found.
Jim Stockdale was an admiral from the U.S army during the Vietnam War and held as a war prisoner for eight years. Although his captors punched him more than twenty times, he never lost faith during his terrible experience.
He had extraordinary faith in the unknown and he realized that he had more faith than any other prisoner, who said that they would be out for Christmas and Christmas would arrive, then they said we would be out for new year, and new year would arrive and so on. They died heartbroken.
The ones who were not optimist did not face the brutal facts and died doing nothing. They preferred to face down and waiting for the difficulties to disappear.
Stockdale view this problem differently. Instead of waiting for the problems to disappear, he accepted the reality that he was living and did something to survive. He made secret codes to communicate with the other prisoners in order to escape and after being 8 years held prisoner he escaped.
The Stockdale paradox teaches an important lesson on confronting the brutal facts. It is hard to accept the reality that you are leaving, because you will neglect the fact that you are leaving under that reality. Once you accept it then you can do something to improve.
Something that I had trouble understanding and didn’t quite got it well was the Stockdale Paradox. So I decided to further research about this topic and see what I found.
Jim Stockdale was an admiral from the U.S army during the Vietnam War and held as a war prisoner for eight years. Although his captors punched him more than twenty times, he never lost faith during his terrible experience.
He had extraordinary faith in the unknown and he realized that he had more faith than any other prisoner, who said that they would be out for Christmas and Christmas would arrive, then they said we would be out for new year, and new year would arrive and so on. They died heartbroken.
The ones who were not optimist did not face the brutal facts and died doing nothing. They preferred to face down and waiting for the difficulties to disappear.
Stockdale view this problem differently. Instead of waiting for the problems to disappear, he accepted the reality that he was living and did something to survive. He made secret codes to communicate with the other prisoners in order to escape and after being 8 years held prisoner he escaped.
The Stockdale paradox teaches an important lesson on confronting the brutal facts. It is hard to accept the reality that you are leaving, because you will neglect the fact that you are leaving under that reality. Once you accept it then you can do something to improve.