Today is October 9 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you view something as hopeless yet remain determined to make them otherwise?”
People who navigate the chaos like Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz know the value of viewing something as hopeless yet figure out a way to make it otherwise.
When he wanted to open up the first Starbucks in Japan, CEO Schultz had to challenge the status quo.
In 1996, Starbucks was advised by a blue-chip consulting company that opening in Japan would be problematic because of many reasons, among which included the high price of real estate, a nonsmoking policy in stores, and a cultural concern that no Japanese consumer would want to be seen carrying anything to eat or drink while walking around outside.
Since 80 percent of Starbucks’ business back then was classified as “to go,” this last concern was particularly distressing.
Even though no one at Starbucks had any international experience, and against the conclusions reached by the consultants, Schultz challenged the status quo and opened the first Starbucks in Japan.
On opening day marked by high humidity and with CNN cameras covering the opening, hundreds of young Japanese people waited to enter the store after Schultz cut the ribbon.
Without advertising and with the Internet in its infancy, news about the Starbucks brand traveled around the world.
As author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.”
Schultz believed he could view something as hopeless yet figured out a way to make it otherwise. Do you?
In The Shawshank Redemption Andy Dufresne wrote about hope in a letter to his dear friend Red: "Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies."
Organizational behavior professor Nir Halevy of Stanford Graduate School of Business researched the value of hope and concluded that “what’s particularly intriguing about hope, is that it’s a future-oriented, positive emotion that often emerges in challenging and difficult circumstances. People don’t feel hope when things are great; it’s when they experience a lot of uncertainty and anxiety that hope emerges.”
He noted that in many situations increasing hope isn’t nearly as difficult a task as decreasing fear. It doesn’t require eliminating the threat. “The fascinating thing about hope, which was noted by the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, is that it coexists with fear. If there’s nothing to fear, there’s little reason to feel hope.”
How often do you remind yourself to have hope?