01.05.09
The Business of Optimism
Optimism is often seen as child’s play. Naïve. Weak-tea thinking in the no-nonsense land of dollars and cents. We disagree. Optimism is serious. Nurture your optimism. It is the fuel of creativity, and ultimately, it is the spark of any successful business.
Why? Optimism has a habit of being self fulfilling. If you expect something to fail, it most often will. However, if you expect it to succeed, it stands a pretty good chance of working out. Any successful business was born of some pure drop of optimism — some person with enough bullheaded enthusiasm to look at an idea and say, “this will work.”
But it’s more than what happens in the beginning. Optimism is the grease in the wheels that can determine the success in the long run. It’s what determines the actions you’re willing to take to see something succeed.
We think of it this way: pretty much every project we have ever worked on has hit a bump in the road at some point — a problem that looks too big to solve, a moment where we have to reevaluate the thinking we started out with, and adapt. It’s at these moments that optimists become problem solvers and look for a way to get over the bumps. And it’s at these moments that cynics say “told you so,“ and simply let the idea fail. Optimism is the extra juice that gets you through the tough spots, when you might otherwise throw up your hands and say it can’t be done.
This is as true in a huge organization as it is in a small one. It is as true in creating breakthrough design and marketing as it is in crafting a ground-changing business strategy. It’s about creating an environment where original, unexpected thinking has a home. Because real revolutionary thinking can only happen in an organization if it is able to nurture and accept optimism. Optimism gives the big ideas the chance to survive.
Even the most creative employees will wither in an environment where cynicism runs rampant. The good ideas will die. You will do much more with your business if you begin a project expecting it to work, if you shoot higher than is reasonable.
There is the old adage that you will go higher if you shoot the moon and miss than if you shoot for the ground and hit it. Shooting for the moon is by definition, optimism. We say, do it.