Issue link: http://psai.uberflip.com/i/1325965
ASSOCIATIONINSIGHT Portable Sanitation Association International News BIWEEKLY EDITION JANUARY 6, 2021 Page 4 Continued on page 17 The Stockdale Paradox and Portable Sanitation in 2021…continued from page 3 Don't Waste Time on What You Can't Control…Control What You Can The portable sanitation industry provides an essential service. We are important. However, we are not epidemiologists, molecular scientists, global economists, or captains of the logistics universe. Our industry represents only 0.01-0.03 percent of the global economy—that's between one and three ten thousandths of the word's commercial activity. Hence, we have extremely limited resources to impact the COVID-19 pandemic or most other global issues on our own. Similarly, when Admiral Stockdale and his men were prisoners of war, they controlled nothing. The conditions of their captivity and their frequent torture were determined by the enemy. What they ate, when they ate, and even whether they ate were out of their hands for every day of their incarceration. Yet Admiral Stockdale wrested control where he could find it and didn't put energy where it would do no good. As recorded by Collins in Good to Great: At one point, [Stockdale] beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself, so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a "well-treated prisoner." He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a stepwise system—after x minutes, you can say certain things—that gave the men milestones to survive toward). So when you consider the present circumstances under which you must run your company, perhaps one of the most important things you can do is discern where you can make a difference and where expending energy is a waste of time. For example, a frequent query now is, "How can my team get the vaccine sooner?" The short answer: "You can't do much, due to the complexity and limitations of the logistical and distribution networks." 1 Your team will get the vaccine as soon as humanly possible, and well before people who are not in essential jobs. If you (and the PSAI) put all our resources into changing this, it would likely not affect the outcome by much, if at all. A better question is, "What part of our current business situation can I control?" Just as Stockdale couldn't control his captors or his release, he could control how he let it affect him, how he participated in what was forced upon him, and how he showed disciplined leadership. See the Opportunities, Not the Limitations For many months now special events, one of the major ways that portable sanitation companies make money, have been completely shut down. If you had told most company leaders a year ago that they would be thriving and growing even though a huge portion of their business was off the table, they may have wondered if you'd been smoking something not available at the grocery store. 1 Attend the Virtual Roundtable Discussion on January 7, 2021 or access the recording to learn more about how the vaccine distribution process works and why it will be difficult to affect it by very much. Photo courtesy of Getty Images