2020 Was Brutal. We Can Undoubtedly Make 2021 Better.

Admiral James Stockdale -
U.S. Navy File Photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As written in the Jim Collins' book Good to Great, The Stockdale Paradox refers to Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner-of-war during the Vietnam war. Being highest-in command at the Hanoi Hilton POW camp, Stockdale held the responsibility of creating conditions to increase the survival rate of his men, while also enduring horrible torture and no certainty if he would make it out alive.

It was in these conditions that Stockdale created a very simple formula (the Paradox) to triumph in the most challenging and uncertain of circumstances: 

Acknowledge and confront in every way the brutal facts of your situation and hold onto the unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end.

 As business leaders, we know that 2020 has been tough. As we reflect on the end of this year, we are fully aware that this year has brought challenges unlike anything we have ever seen before. Before this year, we had never used the term “social distancing”, nor had Zoom ever been so popular. We have heard the words uncertainty and unprecedented more times than we could count.  We celebrated birthdays and holidays virtually, we did “drive by” graduation ceremonies, and we became used to working from home or in masks. We watched with bated breath as we saw the racial turmoil unfold, and our hearts sunk as we saw the economy suffer because we knew that meant the loss of jobs and livelihoods for people who really needed it. This year has been undoubtedly difficult, and we would have good reason to perseverate on the challenges this year has brought forth. If we were to take the advice of Admiral Stockdale, we should not only the brutal facts of 2020, but also go forth into 2021 with hopeful optimism that we will prevail through these circumstances.

In short, we ask you to persevere in your vision.

We know that this is no small ask. To succeed in this time doesn’t just take the spirit of perseverance, it takes a well-founded strategy and steadfast execution. Further, it takes seeing the vast opportunities in a market that only seems to have readily visible challenges. There is reason to hope, for a better 2021, and we will need to be able to set ourselves up well to be able to capitalize on some opportunities. After the last pandemic in 1919, the United States saw the roaring 20s, with abundant wealth and a prosperous economy. Experts suggest that 2021 will see a similar economic boom, even if it will take time to get there, with the economy getting worse before it gets better.

So, what’s the secret to capitalizing on all of the opportunities that 2021 has to offer?

Creating a rock-solid annual plan with your senior leadership team.

The end of the year is this extraordinary time to be able to look towards a better future. The annual planning process is crucial to making that future a reality. This process becomes to really step back and look at the market in a meaningful way. Further, we can use this time to reengage with our customers to understand how their needs are changing and evolving. With our leadership teams, we should be asking great questions of each other, having productive and honest conversations - thoroughly hashing out our strategy. Through these conversations we can come to understand where the white space is for our businesses, and we can end up on a much better, simpler path that we can effectively execute. Our teams understand fully the brutal facts of 2020. It is our job to, with unwavering faith, create a strategy and execution plan that will allow us to prevail in 2021.

At PFD, we’ve been really blessed to have a fantastic methodology and effective virtual tools to be able to facilitate annual planning sessions. If you would like to know more about our process to scale businesses or book an annual planning session for you and your entire senior team, please fill out the form below.

Recommended Reading: December 2020

As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our December Reading List, we recommend these three books: BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier, Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise by Horst Schulze, and The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek. These books provide perspectives about business excellence from extraordinarily successful thought leaders and entrepreneurs.

BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company - Jim Collins & Bill Lazier

What's the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come?

Nine years before the publication of his epochal bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their bestselling book, Beyond Entrepreneurship.

Beyond Entrepreneurship left a definitive mark on the business community, influencing the young pioneers who were, at that time, creating the technology revolution that was birthing in Silicon Valley. Decades later, successive generations of entrepreneurs still turn to the strategies outlined in Beyond Entrepreneurship to answer the most pressing business questions.

BE 2.0 is a new and improved version of the book that Jim Collins and Bill Lazier wrote years ago. In BE 2.0, Jim Collins honors his mentor, Bill Lazier, who passed away in 2005, and reexamines the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship with his 2020 perspective.

The book includes the original text of Beyond Entrepreneurship, as well as four new chapters and fifteen new essays. BE 2.0 pulls together the key concepts across Collins' thirty years of research into one integrated framework called The Map. The result is a singular reading experience, which presents a unified vision of company creation that will fascinate not only Jim's millions of dedicated readers worldwide, but also introduce a new generation to his remarkable work.

Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise - Horst Schulze

CEOs. Leaders without titles. Startups. Corporations. For-profits. Nonprofits. It doesn't matter who you are or what you do - you want to become the best. You want to win, every time.

Horst Schulze knows how to win. In Excellence Wins, Schulze, in his absolute no-nonsense approach, shares the visionary and disruptive principles that have produced immense global successes over the course of his still-prolific fifty-year career.

As the co-founder and former president of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., Schulze fearlessly led the company to unprecedented multi-billion dollar growth, setting the business vision and people-focused standards that made the Ritz-Carlton brand globally elite.

Schulze's principles are both versatile and utterly practical to leaders of every age, career stage, and industry. You don't need a powerful title or a line of direct reports - you have everything you need to use them right now. If you're searching for the blueprint to beating the competition and out-performing everyone around you, look no further than Excellence Wins. Schulze pulls no punches as a masterful guide to becoming the very best in a world of routine compromise. Unleash the disruptive power of your true potential, own your career trajectory, and experience the game-changing proof firsthand: Excellence Wins.

The Infinite Game - Simon Sinek

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world.

How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind.
The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in?
In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning.
Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.

Recommended Reading: October 2020

As a part of our continued commitment to providing the best resources for leaders to better themselves and thrive, for our October Reading List, we recommend these three books: The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni, Titan by Ron Chernow, and How I Built This by Guy Raz. These books provide diverse perspectives about entrepreneurship and self-improvement through the lens of effective narrative structures.

THE IDEAL TEAM PLAYER - HOW TO RECOGNIZE AND CULTIVATE THREE ESSENTIAL VIRTUES - PATRICK LENCIONI

In his book The Ideal Team Player, Patrick Lencioni provides actionable tools on how you should invest in your current team and hire going forward. At PFD, we share Patrick Lencoini’s passion for having healthy work environments. Since becoming CAPA Pro members, we have been able to share Lencioni’s foundational tools with our clients, and we have found that the ideal team player exercise has been worked well during this time of continued uncertainty. The ideal team player is a compelling framework for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players, talking about that these people are happy, humble, and aware of their impact on other people. The applications of this framework span all areas of life, from how we better ourselves, how we hire and develop our current team, how we parent, etc. It is an insightful and useful book, and we can’t recommend it enough.

TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER, SR. - RON CHERNOW

Ron Chernow’s Titan creates a captivating portrait of an entrepreneurial giant - John Rockefeller. The biography details two sides of this imperfect but brilliant figure in history: one side being the businessman whose aggressive practices created an empire, and the other of a philanthropist who donated bountiful amounts of money and was committed to educating marginalized populations. We recommend this book during this time because we find that it is important to tell stories of really strong leaders of different times and draw from the lessons that they have to share. This book is relevant today, because it shows how one leader navigated a time of political uncertainty in US. Further, by reflecting on Rockefeller’s life, we can critically think about the legacy that we are leaving behind, incorporating Rockefeller’s brilliance and commitment to philanthropy into our legacy, but also taking heed to not repeat the more infamous parts of his history.

HOW I BUILT THIS: UNEXPECTED PATHS TO SUCCESS FROM THE WORLD’S MOST INSPIRING ENTREPRENEURS - GUY RAZ

This book from Guy Raz tells stories of entrepreneurial brilliance. Raz is the mind behind and the host of NPR’s podcast by the same name, and it tells stories of innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the movements they built. This book is based off of that podcast, which is the top business podcast on iTunes, with over 200 million downloads to date. By telling these stories, this book offers insight to entrepreneurs on wisdom on how to overcome every problem, and it inspires us to strive for the same level of determination. We at PFD recommend this to our readers to broaden their perspectives and learn lessons from professionals who spent years learning these lessons themselves.

Recommended Reading List: May 2020

Great leaders are capable of leading their teams through both the good and the bad times. These three recommended books below share best practices regarding how to make the most of the current challenges and opportunities, all while being a servant leader.

1.) The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson

The Splendid and the Vile is a captivating read that we found nearly impossible to put down. Erik Larson tells the story of Churchill’s family life and leadership. Churchill’s story during his prime is a great example of how an individual can effectively inspire teams. This narrative shows how important great leadership is at all levels of an organization.

2.) Shackelton’s Way by Margot Morrell

By including anecdotes from Shackleton’s journey in the Antarctic, Margot Morrell shows the incredible leadership style of Shackleton and addresses how it can be used today. This novel demonstrates how to build a diverse and highly functioning team in any circumstance while navigating through uncertainty.

3.) Right Away and All at Once by Greg Brenneman

Written by one of the top turnaround leaders in the world, Right Away and All at Once provides a framework for what is important to keep in mind during uncertain times. Greg Brenneman is able to show how creating an effective life plan can translate into a successful business. This book gives a 5 step roadmap to help create their own plan that will better both their business and themselves.