Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud

the senior managers’ mind-set throws off the firms’ perception of reality. The second most common contributor to executive failure involves ‘ delusional attitudes that keep this inaccurate reality in place ’
    [emphasis added].
    “Perhaps that explains why ‘face reality’ was Jack Welch’s first rule of business. At GE he repeated that mantra time and again and it helped him to make the tough decisions that garnered him such accolades as Manager of the Century by Fortune magazine.”
    Finkelstein goes on to explain how facing those realities is a key ingredient to executing what Drucker referred to as “abandonment” of what was in the way of tomorrow. What a great way to describe a necessary ending.
    Not only is facing reality one of the biggest requirements of success, it is also a significant step in arriving at the pruning moment. As Krames puts it, it’s “a key ingredient to executing.” Ful y embracing reality is not only the “Aha!” of the pruning moment, it is also the fuel that can give one the courage to execute the difficult decisions. It can empower you to do what is otherwise difficult.
    Getting past denial to the “ful embrace of reality,” in Krames’s phrase, has enormous energy and power to move you into the actions you might have been avoiding, past the avoidance that might have been keeping you stuck. When you are driving down a road that feels wrong, you final y turn around when you clearly see that you have hit a dead end. After the initial shock and discouragement, seeing the bare truth that what we are doing is leading nowhere wil get us to change something.
    But as Finkelstein’s study revealed, many people have a mind-set, or “delusional attitudes” that keep the old, inaccurate reality in place. As long as these attitudes are operative, it is difficult for the new, accurate reality to do its fueling work, to provide both the urgency and the motivation needed to execute a change. How to ful y grasp reality and get rid of these mind-sets and attitudes is the subject of this chapter.
    The Old Way Must End

    Welch Al yn, a ninety-five-year-old U.S. company, is a market leader in medical devices. The business has a long tradition of being an innovator in its field, from its earliest days when Dr. Francis Welch and Wil iam Noah Al yn invented the directly il uminated ophthalmoscope. Over the decades, the company has enjoyed employee and customer loyalty as a result of its values-driven culture, leveraging everything good about a family-owned firm. The company’s DNA, built around the core value of “be always kind and true,” has carried it to consistent growth since its inception. If you have ever been in a physician’s office, chances are you have been examined, measured, or monitored by a Welch Al yn instrument and would instantly recognize the familiar blue and green logo.
    In that kind of business scenario—sustained growth and profits over decades, enjoyment of strong and stable market share, brand recognition and industry standing, happy and fulfil ed employees, and a forever loyal and wel -cared-for customer base, it is easy to feel the push to keep going just as you are. “Don’t change anything, just don’t screw it up.” Why in the world would you want to change anything when you have, in ever-increasing measure, what every business tries to accomplish?—being a market leader, having great profits, and being loved by everyone you touch?
    You wouldn’t . . . unless your worldview included life cycles and seasons , as well as an experience base that had trained you to know a pruning moment when you saw one and got terrified by it. That is what happened to Julie Shimer, Welch Al yn CEO.
    When Shimer became CEO, she was selected from the board of directors, so she was familiar with the company and its business. But it was not her board experience that had led her to see the pruning moment needed at Welch Al yn. It was being an experienced technology executive