Continued Success Requires Constant Negativity?
Chet discusses a private sector example of orientation lock.
The point is, though, that if orientation lock can happen to a company as well run as GE, it can happen to anybody. To paraphrase Andy Grove, only those who remain paranoid survive. Perhaps a maxim for senior leaders should be that the more the world seems to be confirming your strategy and your abilities, the more frightened you should become.Chet has made this point many times, most notably in Certain to Win. It is a corollary to his argument that only bad news can help you because only bad news can warn you where your orientation may be off.
I professor of mine said that you have to be paranoid to be a strategist, and my question to both him then and Chet now is “at what cost?” At the level of individuals, depressives have more accurate self-perceptions than healthy individuals. If one truly followed the philosophy that only bad news is useful and continued good news should make you more worried, then how long would it be until this way of thinking spilled over into the rest of your life? How long would it be until the paranoid drive turns you into James Angleton (see chapter six of Thomas Powers’ Intelligence Wars)?
There is a balance in everything. Complacency is a danger and wishing isn’t a strategy. But rampant paranoia and depression bring with them their own dangers.
