Productive Pessimism
Productive Pessimism
The manager sat across my desk from me, going through her list. The conversation was energetic, to the point of being heated.
Her sentences began with phrases like, “Have you thought of. . .?”, and “Has anyone even checked on . . . ?”, or “What are we going to do if. . . ?”.
As she went through her list, I listened and took some notes. She seemed a little stressed out as she left, and the intensity of the conversation made the silence afterward a little more noticeable.
Within a couple of minutes, my sales manager, whose office was next door, came in.
“Man,” he said. “I don’t know why you let her talk to you like that. You’re a Vice President!”
“Yeah, the delivery might need some polish,” I replied, “but here’s the problem: She’s right.”
Optimism is Overrated
I’ll admit it. I’m a reformed optimist. It’s in my nature that I tend to believe things will turn out fine, so that’s often my default reaction.
Optimists are pleasant to be around, because they believe in and point to a future that looks good. Thinking about smooth sailing ahead makes us feel good and reduces our stress levels.
Unfortunately, life – and business in particular – doesn’t work like that. Challenges are around every corner, and threats can come out of the blue. Optimism tells us that every single one of our plans will work, while rational consideration reveals that to be unlikely.
I used to criticize my wife for being a pessimist. She always had a litany of things that could potentially go wrong, but after 30+ years of marriage I recognize that her “worrying” helped us plan solutions for what could possibly happen. Her insistence on making sure we had minimal debt whenever possible really minimized the stress that we felt when the waters got choppy.
The biggest danger of optimism is that it prevents us from considering exactly what might happen, and if we don’t know what might happen, we can’t plan for it.
Productive Pessimism is Not Negativity
“This sucks. Nothing f*cking works. It all just sucks.”
I can still hear the echoes from a coworker from early in my career. We were trying to do something as audacious as creating newspaper advertisements with the new Macintosh computers that our company had purchased, and we had run into some roadblocks.
I remember being excited – remember my natural optimism – because we were working with what seemed like the future of publishing. Jim was a really smart guy, and I was also excited about the opportunity to work with someone that intelligent. But he was negative. So negative. He sucked the life out of the room.
Negativity is a perspective that highlights challenges and holds them up as evidence of inevitable failure. It’s emotionally draining, and it can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Leaders who allow their team to sink into negativity, or worse, engage in negativity themselves, are unlikely to guide their team to success. Negativity limits your ability to imagine solutions.
Productive Pessimism highlights challenges the way headlights shine a light on obstacles in the road. If you can’t see it, you can’t avoid it.
Productive Pessimism is Not Complaining
As a member of my son’s Boy Scout Troop Committee, I often accompanied the troop on campouts. On one occasion, I heard a scout complaining about how it frequently rained when we planned campouts. He complained that his raincoat was at the bottom of his backpack, his socks were wet, and the snacks he brought were soaked.
I couldn’t help getting involved. “Did you look at the forecast before we left?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “And I said, ‘Of course it’s going to rain because we’re going camping’”.
“Did you pack extra socks in a zipper bag?” I asked.
“No”
“Did you put your snacks in a waterproof container?”
“No”
“And you packed your raincoat at the bottom of your backpack?” I asked, incredulously.
“Actually, my mom packed my backpack,” he said.
“Piece of advice,” I said, “Don’t complain to your mom about how she packed your backpack. She might actually kill you.”
Complaints are a way to highlight challenges, unfortunate circumstances or disappointments and place them squarely in the responsibility of someone else. Anyone else.
The Productive Pessimist highlights challenges ahead and then owns them. The productive pessimist in an organization might not have the authority to address all of the challenges they see, so they tend to bring them to higher levels of leadership. The challenge for the leader is to see a productive pessimist as key to the organization’s success and take their concerns seriously.
Productive Pessimism is About Action
Productive Pessimism was very useful in the newspaper business. Where success is measured in minutes rather than in hours or days, surprises are not welcome. What’s more, no one wants a 2:00 a.m. phone call asking, “What should we do?”
Fortunately, I had a team of productive pessimists who thought through the potential challenges and pitfalls and often had a response at the ready when things went sideways. Reconfigure the press, move the product to a different inserter, label it off-line. Backup plans were always in place, because “You never know what might happen.”
Productive Pessimism is about action. That’s what separates it from optimism, negativism, or complaining. It shines the light to see the obstacle in the road, and turns the wheel.
The Supply Chain discipline has what they call a risk register, but in Operations we tend to think that good plans will result in good results. While that sounds good, a dose of pessimism might be in order.
So let her, or him, or them, talk to you that way. They might just be right.
