The Stockdale Paradox.

As any conscientious newly elected president would, I've been reading a variety of material on organizational leadership. In particular, on my long commute to my day job, I've been listening to Jim Collins' Good to Great. (The Los Angeles Public Library is the mother lode when it comes to books on tape, and they make it easy to find and get the books or tapes you want. And my office is accross the street from the Central Library, so getting access to knowledge is easy). My wife Laura-Beth, who used to be a Senior Vice President of Consumer Marketing at a major financial institution, has spoken about the book, as has Rabbi Camras, one of our Board members.

It's an interesting book, although like many "advice" or "how to" books, much of the time is spent justifying why you should listen to the advice given in the book, instead of just providing the advice. So some of the book is ballast. In any event, much of the book is self-evident (or was to my wife, who said that many of the recommendations were obvious to her based upon her nearly two decades in the corporate world), and the book, written in 2001, now is a bit suspect. Several of the "great companies" no longer exist. In particular, Collins mentions Circuit City and FannieMae, both of whom, well, are no longer great, and in the case of Circuit City, are no longer anything at all.

But during this morning's commute Collins spoke about the Stockdate Paradox, named for James Stockdale, a navy admiral who was held prisoner in Vietnam for eight years. Those of you who followed my old blog will recall that I linked footage of Stockdale's less than impressive turn as Ross Perot's Vice Presidential candidate. Stockdale told Collins that the ones that did not survive in the Hanoi prison camp were the optimists; the ones that believed that they would be released in a matter of months when it was clear that they would not be. Conversely, the ones that survived were the ones that believed that they would survive, but also did not ignore that the struggle would be horrific and thus tried to deal with the facts on the ground. This is, Collins says, the Stockdale Paradox. It is the idea that in addition to having faith in the ultimate ability of the organization to prevail and thrive, the organization and its leaders must possess the discipline to confront the "brutal facts." Hence the paradox: on the one hand, you have to believe that you will succeed; on the other hand, you can't ignore the brutal facts before you.

This resonated with me as I thought about Kadima. We have a great school. We have a great purpose and a great vision (more on that, later). We've got a great new HOS and and we've got a good program, and we are working to make it the best. But we can't ignore our challenges. And we won't. Collins makes clear that an organization can only become great if it both has faith in the merits of its underlying vision and purpose, and the intestinal fortitude to look at the facts realistically and honestly.

When I think of our Board, I know that we will be spending time this year examing and aligning the school's purpose, and being honest with ourselves and our constituencies about what we need to improve. And how we must all work to improve the school. While the Board are the fiduciaries and leaders of the school, Kadima cannot succeed without the help and commitment of everyone at the school.