The Stockdale Paradox

Over the last several weeks we’ve explored four major problems with the church and what we should do about them. After digging into these issues, we’re left with the question, “Is this even possible?” The answer is yes, but getting there may be harder than we’d like to think.

In Good to Great by Jim Collins, the author,  introduces the Stockdale Paradox. To better explain this paradox, I would like to quote the story told on pages 83-85 of the book.

“Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner of war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda. At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself so that he could not be put on video as an example of a well-treated prisoner. He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a stepwise system–after x minutes, you can say certain things–that gave the men milestones to survive toward). He instituted an elaborate internal communications system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create, which used a five by five matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. At one point, during and imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swish-swashing out “We love you” to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

When asked how in the world did he make it through, Stockdale responded, “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

The optimists didn’t make it out. They believed they would be out by Christmas, then Easter, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas all over again. They would die of a broken heart. Stockdale says, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Great companies, and churches, inherently live the Stockdale Paradox out. They face the most brutal facts of their current reality, and yet never lose hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The leaders who can embrace this paradox are the ones who lead their organizations out of the darkest times and into the brightest. They may be scared, but it is a defining moment in their lives that they would never trade.

I believe that we can solve the problems that the church faces. It may not be this year or the next, but we will get there. Will you join me?