Living the Paradox

“Innovators, like immigrants, feel compelled to take the step because they can no longer tolerate the place where they are.


“Complexity theory shows that great changes can emerge from small actions, that the possible, even the “impossible,” can happen.  That’s the part that involves keeping your head in the stars.  But what about keeping your feet on the ground?  How do social innovators do that?

“They face reality.

“Reality testing has a bad reputation among some visionaries.  Leaders tend to attract and surround themselves with believers – true believers, positive thinkers, hope-springs-eternalists.  Criticism is well known to undermine creativity, which is why it’s outlawed in brainstorming exercises.  But how can social innovators fully engage both their critical and creative faculties?  The answer lies in a commitment to reality testing that is no less fierce than the commitment to reach for the stars.

“Jim Collins, author of the best-selling management book Good to Great, studies with his research team how good companies become great.  Not many companies actually made the grade, but those that did all had leaders who lived the paradox between absolute dedication to a great vision and ruthless commitment to staring reality in the face.  Collins called this the Stockdale paradox in honour of James Stockdale, the fabled American navy officer who survived years of torture in North Vietnamese prisons.  Stockdale had an unwavering belief that he would survive and an equally unrelenting vigilance about the realities of his captivity.  He was constantly attuned to what was happening to him and his fellow prisoners, and adapted his survival strategies and tactics accordingly, day by day.  When, after a period of unusual good treatment, he realized that he was about to be used as propaganda to show the world how well prisoners were being cared for, he brutalized his own face so that he could not be so used.  Hearing how Stockdale managed to stay ever hopeful and survive, Collins asked him how he would characterize those who didn’t make it, those who died in captivity.  That’s easy, Stockdale replied.  The people who died were the unwavering optimists, the ones who said they’d be out by Christmas, and then by Easter, and then by summer’s end, and then again by Christmas, always and only focusing on some future hope.  They died, he said, of broken hearts.

“The great companies Collins’s team studied all shared an unrelenting belief in a better future and an obsession with data about the realities of the present.  They monitored the results of their initiatives relentlessly, tracking what was working and not working and how their environment was changing.  They allowed themselves no rose-coloured glasses, no blind spots, no positive thinking.  Ruthless attention to reality was the common path to attaining their visions.


“Social innovators epitomize the Stockdale paradox.  They are fiercely visionary and hopeful even while determinedly grounding their actions in the cold heaven of daily reality testing.  For them, hell is not failing; hell is delusion.  Hell is kidding yourself about what is going on, for therein are the seeds of failure sown.  In its essence, developmental evaluation is about learning what works, acknowledging what doesn’t work, and learning to tell the difference – with none of the blaming of cold heaven attached.”


You may be glad to know that I finally finished reading Getting To Maybe (How the World Is Changed).  These are the last quotations that I will use in a C4L Bulletin.


Without diminishing in any way what Jim Stockdale lived through, I can say that C4L is currently staring reality right in the face! 

On the one hand, the campus look green and trim, and has the biggest and best team that C4L has ever started a year with.  There is also more approved funding “in the pipeline” than ever before at the beginning of a year.  C4L continues to generate outputs – more training materials, more events, more outreach to youth and OVC. You can get dizzy from counting them all.

On the other hand, a close look at cash-flow caused C4L to literally increase its mortgage bond just to keep the wheels turning in early 2010.  The annual grantseeking drive is underway, and there are prospects.  Campus bookings are few and far between, as many NGOs are shrinking and some have closed.  So we actually have no choice but to watch that daily balance closer than ever!  At times like this, you ask yourself why donors insist that you spend every penny, and don’t allow retention!

It is not the first year that the early months have been tense – but in 2010 it is on a grander scale than ever, because C4L is growing.  I am not going offer optimistic forecasts that say it will be over by Easter.  Just ruthless attention to reality – C4L has the resourcefulness to pull through this slump in its annual cycle.  Just like real estate agents know the times of year when house sales are up, and when they are down – C4L is pinching but is gradually becoming drought-resistant.

The attached document refreshes the Vision that C4L has shared with you time and again.  It reiterates the same Mission of equipping God’s people for works of service.

Hell is not failing, if you don’t make it through the gauntlet.  Hell is delusion – thinking it will be a cake-walk.  We may be day-dreamers, but we are hard-nosed too.  We know where we stand.

We are living the paradox.

Because we can no longer tolerate the way things are in Africa.