and jump on board. But fortunately, she did not have a lot of internal interference with her own wish to pul the trigger. That is the biggest hurdle for a leader . The rest is strategy and implementation.
So at this point, do a little self-questioning about your eyesight. Is it 20/20 with regard to being ready to see an ending? Are you walking into the possibility for a pruning moment with clear eyes? Remember, your brain wil shape reality to fit the maps in your head, so make sure your eyes are clear, not blurred by the kinds of maps we have said can get in the way of seeing when an ending is necessary. If they are, let’s get to the other ingredients that get us to the point of seeing reality as it real y is.
The stakes are huge. If you can see reality and realize that the lights you see in the distance are a train headed straight for you, you wil get motivated and make the changes that wil lead to success. But, if you don’t and you keep having false hope, you might be signing up for failure or worse. Getting to 20/20 vision so you can see reality is a must.
The Big Change Motivator: Get Hopeless
Hope is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. With hope, we can endure almost anything, and certainly more than if we lose it or don’t have it to begin with. In short, hope keeps us going. And that is the problem.
When it comes to seeing reality, almost nothing gets in the way like a hope distortion, in either direction. First, if we are the kind to lose hope just because something looks difficult or bleak, we wil accomplish little. Almost anything of value is only accomplished because someone kept going past the moment of thinking “al is lost.” That is the nature of heroic leadership and heroic life. As Admiral James Stockdale saw in his POW
experience in Vietnam, hope is a requirement for survival and winning. Stockdale’s experience reminds leaders that you must recognize and own the brutal facts while at the same time never letting go of the determination that you are going to win, no matter how long it takes. In our discussion of getting to reality, notice how the time and hope dimension quickly enter into it, as Stockdale mentions.
He says to recognize how bad it is and at the same time keep hope going, no matter how long it takes. Hope is always about holding on when it looks bad and being able to hold on sometimes for a long time. The time dimension is a key component, because if it did not require time, we would have no use for hope. We would already have everything we want, right now, today. But many times we do not have what we want right now and have to hold on to hope for quite some time, and then as we persevere, we succeed.
Amazon, founded in 1994, did not make a profit until 2001. Investors and the markets were losing hope and giving Jeff Bezos a very hard time, as he continued to have hope and try to convince others to have hope as wel . Time would help and was built into his business model. He maintained hope as others lost it, and now Amazon is stil around and thriving. He was right, and the ones without hope were wrong. So hope is good and requires time as part of its equation. But . . . that is also the problem: Hope buys time, and spends it.
Hope is designed to give us more time, so that whatever we are hoping for can come to pass. But because that is what hope does for us—buys more time and spends it—it sometimes creates problems if we are not in touch with reality. In that case , it is hope that keeps us going down a road that has no realistic chance of being the right road or making what we want come to pass . In a false reality, hope is the worst quality you can have!
Yet sometimes, people keep hoping, in spite of a clear reality staring them in the face.
As Shimer tel s it, reality was right there for al at Motorola to see. Digital was coming. But their profits gave them the false hope that they could ride that wave forever. Their market share fueled the happiness of
So at this point, do a little self-questioning about your eyesight. Is it 20/20 with regard to being ready to see an ending? Are you walking into the possibility for a pruning moment with clear eyes? Remember, your brain wil shape reality to fit the maps in your head, so make sure your eyes are clear, not blurred by the kinds of maps we have said can get in the way of seeing when an ending is necessary. If they are, let’s get to the other ingredients that get us to the point of seeing reality as it real y is.
The stakes are huge. If you can see reality and realize that the lights you see in the distance are a train headed straight for you, you wil get motivated and make the changes that wil lead to success. But, if you don’t and you keep having false hope, you might be signing up for failure or worse. Getting to 20/20 vision so you can see reality is a must.
The Big Change Motivator: Get Hopeless
Hope is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. With hope, we can endure almost anything, and certainly more than if we lose it or don’t have it to begin with. In short, hope keeps us going. And that is the problem.
When it comes to seeing reality, almost nothing gets in the way like a hope distortion, in either direction. First, if we are the kind to lose hope just because something looks difficult or bleak, we wil accomplish little. Almost anything of value is only accomplished because someone kept going past the moment of thinking “al is lost.” That is the nature of heroic leadership and heroic life. As Admiral James Stockdale saw in his POW
experience in Vietnam, hope is a requirement for survival and winning. Stockdale’s experience reminds leaders that you must recognize and own the brutal facts while at the same time never letting go of the determination that you are going to win, no matter how long it takes. In our discussion of getting to reality, notice how the time and hope dimension quickly enter into it, as Stockdale mentions.
He says to recognize how bad it is and at the same time keep hope going, no matter how long it takes. Hope is always about holding on when it looks bad and being able to hold on sometimes for a long time. The time dimension is a key component, because if it did not require time, we would have no use for hope. We would already have everything we want, right now, today. But many times we do not have what we want right now and have to hold on to hope for quite some time, and then as we persevere, we succeed.
Amazon, founded in 1994, did not make a profit until 2001. Investors and the markets were losing hope and giving Jeff Bezos a very hard time, as he continued to have hope and try to convince others to have hope as wel . Time would help and was built into his business model. He maintained hope as others lost it, and now Amazon is stil around and thriving. He was right, and the ones without hope were wrong. So hope is good and requires time as part of its equation. But . . . that is also the problem: Hope buys time, and spends it.
Hope is designed to give us more time, so that whatever we are hoping for can come to pass. But because that is what hope does for us—buys more time and spends it—it sometimes creates problems if we are not in touch with reality. In that case , it is hope that keeps us going down a road that has no realistic chance of being the right road or making what we want come to pass . In a false reality, hope is the worst quality you can have!
Yet sometimes, people keep hoping, in spite of a clear reality staring them in the face.
As Shimer tel s it, reality was right there for al at Motorola to see. Digital was coming. But their profits gave them the false hope that they could ride that wave forever. Their market share fueled the happiness of
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