Stockdale Paradox

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If you’ve been hanging around Zen for a while, you may have heard me mention one of my favorite business concepts, the Stockdale Paradox. It’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about over the last several weeks (I’ll define it in a moment if you’re not familiar with it), because I’ve heard a lot of people saying things along the lines of “if we can just get through the next few months to 2021,” or “I can’t wait for this year to be over!” as if the pandemic or the economic crisis or in the case of the US, our elections, will solve all of the current issues that we’re facing.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could flip a switch and everything would suddenly be resolved?
Continue Reading The Stockdale Paradox and its Pandemic Relevance

The legal industry is in the midst of challenging and exciting times. To many firms, so much change and uncertainty may feel like a bit of a crisis, while others see it as more of an opportunity. Regardless of how you see it, it’s certainly a time of upheaval.

I have finally gotten around to reading Jim Collins’ “Good to Great” which has been lounging on my bookshelf for the better part of several years. While there are many lessons in the book that firms looking to become “great” should take to heart, there was one observation that the authors made that really struck me as relevant for firms in today’s marketplace – the Stockdale Paradox.

Collins observes that every “good to great” company they examined in the course of the book’s research had faced “significant adversity.” The difference between those companies who became great, and those companies who didn’t is what Collins refers to as the “Stockdale Paradox.”
Continue Reading Great Law Firms Will Embrace the Stockdale Paradox