Unease is rippling through financial markets, and a sense of anxiety has overtaken society. In the United States, the presidential campaign has devolved into a frenzy of personal insults and unhinged behavior. Technology may be heading toward self-driving cars and genomics-inspired medicine, but most people believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. In times like these, even for leaders committed to building a more prosperous future for their organizations, it’s easy to surrender to pessimism.
To which I say, as the old joke goes, “I’d be a pessimist, but it would never work.” I’ve just finished writing a book about companies in pretty ordinary settings (banks, hospitals, even a parking garage) that have won big by doing truly extraordinary things. As I think about the outlook on the future that cuts across these organizations, the mindset that guides their leaders and energizes their members, I’m struck by the fierce sense of optimism that pervades them. Not wide-eyed optimism, an unthinking faith in the inevitability of success, but what the leadership scholar and civic reformer John Gardner famously called “tough-minded optimism,” a blend of original ideas, deep convictions, and resilience in the face of change.
“The future is not shaped by people who don’t really believe in the future,” Gardner said. Rather, “it is created by highly motivated people, by enthusiasts, by men and women who want something very much or believe very much.” The best leaders have all sorts of skills and use all kinds of techniques, he observed, but there is no substitute “for the lift of spirit and heightened performance that comes from strong motivation.”
As I think about the leaders I’ve studied, those who are winning big in tough and demanding fields, what strikes me is that they’ve developed compelling answers to four questions that get to the heart of what lifts their spirits and heightens their performance, what rallies others to help them succeed. Wrestling with these questions might make you more optimistic about the future and more motivated to be tough-minded in the face of doubters and cynics:
- Do you have a definition of success for your business that allows you to stand for something special and that inspires others to stand with you? The most successful companies don’t just sell competitive products and services; they stand for important ideas, ideas that shape the future direction of their fields, ideas that reshape the sense of what’s possible for customers, colleagues, and investors. The most exciting companies I know don’t want to be the best at what lots of others already do. They want to be the only ones who do what they do. That sense of originality represents an alluring alternative to a dreary status quo.
- Do you and your colleagues work as distinctively as you compete? The most successful leaders and organizations think differently from everyone else (see above). But they also care more than everyone else — about customers, about colleagues, about how the whole organization conducts itself in a world with so many opportunities to cut corners and compromise on values. It’s good to be efficient and professional; it’s essential to be memorable and meaningful. This emotional connection — between organizations and their people, between brands and their customers — creates positive energy even in negative environments.
- Are you as consistent as you are creative? Being optimistic is not the same as being totally open to change. In fact, one reason people get pessimistic about the future is that the organizations they are a part of can’t stop changing. Too many companies lurch from one consulting firm to the next, from last year’s hot management fad to this year’s new business model. Management guru Jim Collins puts it this way: “The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.” If you want to be a tough-minded optimist, then your priorities have to stay consistent in good times and bad.
- Have you figured out how your company’s history can help to shape its future? Psychologist Jerome Bruner put his finger on what can happen when the best of the old informs the search for the new. The essence of creativity, he argues, is “figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think.” That’s why the most optimistic leaders I’ve met don’t disavow what’s come before. Instead, they reinterpret what’s come before as a way to develop a line of sight into what comes next. Sometimes, the very act of rediscovering the past creates the confidence necessary to craft a game plan for the future.
I’d never suggest that embracing a spirit of tough-minded optimism, of devising answers to the four questions I set forth, guarantees success. Gardner himself, in his case for the power of optimism, liked to cite another old quip: “Pessimists got that way by financing optimists.” But in a time of wrenching disruptions and exhilarating breakthroughs, of unrelenting turmoil and unlimited promise, you can’t create a better future for your organization and your colleagues unless you first believe in the future.
William C. Taylor is cofounder of Fast Company magazine. His forthcoming book is Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways.
