Managing to Make a Difference

Chapter 29Be Unreasonably Optimistic

If you are going to set audacious (possibly unreasonable) goals, you will need a high level of optimism (possibly unreasonable optimism) to keep you on the path to achieving them. Here is a great story of how unreasonable optimism can work in your favor.

The Unmovable Float

My former boss and mentor, Sigi Brauer, was relentlessly positive and unfailingly optimistic. One spring weekend, I was one of several people visiting his home on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. His lakefront amenities included a floating platform you could swim to from the shore. Because the lake iced over during the winter, the platform had been pulled onto the shore, which consisted entirely of large boulders. So at the time of my visit, the platform was out of the water, sitting on the boulders.

It was late spring. The ice had melted, and the water temperature was rising. It was just barely warm enough to swim. Because two of the visitors were adult males, Sigi invited us to help put the float back into the water. We marched down the slope to the platform. It was a large wooden platform sitting atop several full-sized metal garbage cans—a very heavy object, indeed. We did our best to move it. We tried each person taking a different corner. We tried all three of us on one corner. We tried all kinds of variations. The platform did not budge, even a bit.

It was obvious to me that we were not going to move that platform. I would have accepted reality and given ...