This speech by Jim Collins for The Drucker Institute talks about The Stockdale Paradox, which is rooted in the story of Admiral James Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War

The Incredible Stoicism of Admiral James Stockdale
On September 9, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk jet was shot down in Vietnam. He was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese and spent the next seven years being tortured and subjected to unimaginable loneliness and terror. Fortunately, three years earlier, he was recommended a book. That book, he says, saved his life. After twenty years in the navy, Stockdale decided to go back to school. He enrolled in a two-year graduate program at


