Optimism is a Kind of Blindness

Perhaps it is because I have seen the word optimism abused that I say optimism is a kind of blindness.  Optimism like hope is used to justify our limited planning and reduced talent.  Through optimism, we encourage troops to charge across a field that will surely end in their death and little else (Pickett’s charge).  It is optimism that responds to valid constraints or risks cavalierly or worse yet shooting the nay-saying messenger.  Consider the Allied Operation Market Garden, dropping paratroopers on top of tanks. The messenger that brought this to the attention of “management” was (-Major Brian Urquhart) and he would be asked to take sick leave because he pointed out that dropping paratroopers on top of tanks would be a poor idea.  He rocked the boat.

I am not comparing the seriousness of troops and their lives with business, but this approach is not limited to generals and wartime.  This approach happens in business every day I imagine.  This same do not rock the boat, optimism in spite of facts or evidence is precisely when optimism becomes fantasy as Learn. Lead. Repeat. put it on twitter.

Optimism and fantasy

Objectivity, Projects and Product Test

This is not a trivial thing. Any objective of significance will come with challenges and pitfalls.  A bad or negative attitude is just as bad as blind adherence through optimism.  Finding the “truth” can be difficult, something’s are not readily knowable, and sometimes we do not know the right question or have access to measurements that can help us find out if we are deluding ourselves with optimism or hope.

1. Think critically
2. Seek other perspectives than our own (think critically on these perspectives)
3. Identify metrics that will help us understand what is possible
4. Take accurate and appropriate measurements
5. Respond quickly to what you learn

If you have been involved in many projects, you will know that optimism can damage starting with our project plan, through project resources (understaffed) and through progress tracking, all in the name of optimism.  If you have been a testing person, you will have seen late deliveries, buggy iterations and the desire to quickly move the last iteration to production in spite of what the previous iterations of the product suggest the next iteration quality will be.  We may even decide to launch because we have not seen any failures neglecting the fact that we have not conducted any tests.

There is a place for Optimism

To be sure there is a place for optimism, if we believe we are doomed then we likely are doomed.  On the other hand, we cannot let rampant optimism lead us to believe what is impossible to be very possible but perhaps just out of reach.  As Learn.Lead.Repeat suggested on Twitter, the challenge is to help leaders understand that optimism is much different than fantasy, and hope without wisdom is fantasy.

Optimism is a Kind of Blindness