2 minute read
Editor’s Letter
Living the
Stockdale Paradox
Jim Collins’s book Good to Great influences my business and per- sonal life daily. I imagine it may be the same for many of you.
In it, Collins shows us how companies can move from mediocrity to enduring greatness. He also gives us the gift of Navy Admiral James Stockdale’s perspective on overcoming crisis. Collins dubs it the “Stockdale Paradox” – the art of simultaneously recognizing and accepting the realities at hand while maintaining the faith that we will prevail in the end.
Stockdale was the highest-ranking officer held at the “Hanoi Hilton,” as North Vietnam’s Hoa Lo Prison was known. The most infamous prison camp of the Vietnam War, it was notorious for the suffering and indignities American prisoners-of-war endured there. As ranking naval officer, for eight years Stockdale was both leader and guide to his fellow captives, while, like them, he was tortured, beaten, held in irons, bound, and often held in solitary confinement. He found the courage to withstand his brutal captivity by accepting reality while believing he would one day go home.
Interviewing Stockdale about his experience Collins asked, “Who did not make it out?” Stockdale replied, “The optimists. They were the ones who said, ‘We are going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they would die of a broken heart.”
This conversation led Stockdale to share his most his most important lesson: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you cannot afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
In his book, Collins and his team identify 11 companies that go through otherwise crushing crises while maintaining an unwavering faith in their organizations’ ultimate triumph.
In a recent YouTube video, Collins says that today, we find ourselves in a Stockdale Moment. The world is in a Stockdale Moment. Our hospitals are in a Stockdale Moment. We, ourselves, are in a Stockdale Moment.
He asks us how we can engage those around us to believe we will prevail in the end, and how we can each do a better job of confronting the brutal facts as they are today, whatever they might be. He calls this “embracing the Stockdale Paradox.”
The articles in this edition of Arkansas Hospitals show how our hospitals and their exceptional staffs embrace the Stockdale Paradox, coming together to identify problems and find solutions for their communities.
We are all experiencing the enormous and overwhelming challenges the pandemic brings to society as a whole and especially to hospitals and caregivers. We know that, despite increasing vaccine availability and vaccinations occurring worldwide, there are virus variants that lurk as part of today’s reality. But we also firmly believe the world, the U.S., our hospitals, our communities, are going to persevere.
Together, we will make it through to the end of this pandemic. Embrace the Stockdale Paradox, and keep the faith.
-Jim Collins, relating the Stockdale Paradox in his book, Good to Great
Elisa M. White Editor in Chief
