trail-blazing

 

He not busy being born

Is busy dying

-Bob Dylan

            

Dylan’s verse is true of both individuals and organisations. Part of being born is knowing and believing in what is optimum; what is the greatest good?

The opposite of this, of course, is pessimism; someone busy dying, someone waiting for it to rain (to use a line from Leonard Cohen). The pessimist sees no point in trying to achieve the greatest good as we will all die anyway. The great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer described pessimism as a depreciated will-to-live.

The wonder of optimism is that it has a focus on possibility, on what we could do, could achieve. Interestingly there was an movement begun in 1919 in America called Optimist International. It was made up of professional and business people devoted to civic improvement and improvement among all people.

Importance of purpose

Great organisations have embedded in their brand purpose and their stories a strong sense of optimistic meaning. They therefore naturally tend to attract optimistic people who can support and direct their behaviours toward this optimum concept.

It is my experience that the poison that negatively impacts on brands and organisations and which is far more detrimental than the force of competition is pessimistic staff. This manifests as corridor whining and undermining; a cynicism toward and mockery of forward motion. Author Milan Kundera described this phenomenon as the rust that corrodes all it touches.

Implicit in optimism, as Dylan suggests, is a continuing rebirth, innovation, growth and forward momentum. But, too much of what actually happens in organisations is not about visualising and moving forward, but is too much about what can’t be done and a focus on bureaucratic systems that make it challenging for anything to be born and often leaves most ideas still-born. This is what the plethora of meetings actually achieve.

Organisations need to value optimism and all those people who exude this energy. They must establish pessimism-radars to quickly identify muttering sources of can’t be done and sort them or eject them. Pessimism kills, partly because it is so quickly degenerates into cynicism - the energy of which is 'why even bother'.

Ratchet optimism

Protect your organisations, and align your purpose to specific optimistic behaviours. Certainly do allow sceptical questions as they help rebirth, but do make it as impossible as you can, to allow any fertile soil for cynicism, mockery and pessimism.

The other upside for getting this right is that optimistic people are usually happy people and this energy has magnetic attraction and over-rides obstacles and challenges.

One might ask how to ratchet up levels of optimism and this could require revisiting the purpose and values of the organisation and or the leadership and management thereof.

I guess the above also applies to societies and countries.

If anyone wants an example of unfettered optimism, sit and watch children at play in sandpits and on jungle gyms, merry go rounds and swinging as high as they can.