In our research on tools for leading through change and uncertainty, one of the hardest tools to write about was the “As If” tool. Uncertainty is challenging because it creates doubt and anxiety about whether we will succeed, meet our goals, achieve our ambition, or secure the future we envision. None of us like to feel this doubt, nor do those we live and work with. So how do we face this inevitable doubt with courage and resilience?
Our research suggested one (among many) rather unusual remedy: one of the most powerful tools we can invoke to create an uncertain future is to live “As If” that future was already here! Before you dismiss this approach as too new age, it’s important to understand that it has deep philosophical roots. For example, Hans Vaihinger, in an extended treatise points out that most of life is already lived “As If” something were true. For example, when you set aside the years to attend university, you don’t actually know if you will learn anything or get a job but you live “as if” the story that university will lead to a better future for you is true. Indeed Vaihinger points out that life is full of useful stories—such as how medicine works—that we don’t objectively know to be true, as proven by our ever-evolving knowledge of science and the immense power of placebos when there is no medicine at all!
But the concept of “As If” has been watered down in contemporary society by taking it to an extreme to suggest that you can choose the future you want—with certainty—just by living as if something were true. This extreme well illustrated by Nathan Hill’s satirical treatment in his book Wellness. In this book people live “as if” they do not have diabetes while doctors are begging them to take insulin, spend money they don’t have because they are living as if they already have a better-paying job, and other such foolishness. Clearly this version of “As If” is a simple delusion and discredits the entire idea of “As If.”
So what is real? Can “As If” really help us create the future in an uncertain world?
Recently a friend reminded me of the Stockdale Paradox. As recounted by Jim Collins, Admiral James Stockdale was imprisoned for seven years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, enduring solitary confinement and beatings. When finally released he could barely stand or walk. But he survived. When Collins asked Stockdale why he survived when many others did not, Stockdale replied: “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into a defining moment of my life, which in retrospect, I would not trade.”
But then when Collins asked who didn’t make it, Stockdale offered this interesting challenge: “oh that’s easy, the overly optimistic who said, we’re going to be out by Christmas, and then Christmas would come and go. Then they would say we’re going to be out by Easter and Easter would come and go, then it was we’re going to be out by Thanksgiving and when it didn’t happen, they died of a broken heart.” So what is the difference? Stockdale observes: “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, what ever that might be."
At first glance, this would seem to contradict the “As If” principle, but in fact it provides an essential key to making it work. What the characters in Wellness, and many who inappropriately apply the “As If” principle get wrong is to ignore reality and then wait for some unseen power to deliver them the future they imagine with certainty. By contrast, in all accounts of the “As If” principle we wrote about in The Upside of Uncertainty, living “As If” implies great action.
For example, the late contemporary philosopher Christopher Hitchens, who advocated for the “As If” principle as a tool of political protest argued that when Rosa Parks sat in the front of the bus during the struggle for civil rights, she was taking careful, thoughtful action to live “As If” she lived in a world where a tired woman could sit anywhere she wanted. Likewise, when Victor Havel found his nation under totalitarian rule, in The Power of the Powerless encouraged those around him to live “as if” they were citizens of a free republic. The change took decades, and at times such a posture must have seemed impossible to maintain. But the people of the Czech Republic did free themselves and Victor Havel became their first president.
Thus living “As If” is an active doing, rather than a denial or pretending. It is a dialogue with uncertainty to create the future, not a future you command with certainty as if you are ordering a dish in a restaurant. You live “As If” by doing the thing that would get you there. If you dream of a project, an idea, a job, or a location, you live it into being by living by, for example, taking small steps—what we call affordable losses in the innovation world—towards creating that future.
To illustrate, when I visited France for the first time, I fell in love and dreamt of making a life there. But the path seemed long and impossible. We had four children, one income, a crushing load of student debt, and I had few of the qualifications such a top school would value (I had a PhD but few publications and professors live and die by publications). INSEAD, one of the world’s top business schools, was one of the only schools in Europe with a salary that might work, so when we arrived home, I started getting up extra early, putting in more work on advancing my publications. But when I reached out to a professor at the school, he told me frankly: you don’t have nearly enough publications and you aren’t publishing in the quality of journals we value. It was crushing. But I continued on, living “As If” I was already the quality of professor INSEAD would value. This meant putting in the hours to improve my work, targeting the journals they valued, attending the top, and forming partnerships with scholars who could teach me. It was a hard journey. One paper took 12 years to publish. But five years after that conversation, I joined INSEAD, and seven years later was promoted to the top academic rank, full professor. I doubted along the way. There were moments it seemed it would never happen. And even if a different future came about, we would have made it a great experience. But it gave me insight into “As If.” The journey is filled with doubt, but the power of it is living and working every day nonetheless to bring about that future if possible.
My experience is a single case. However, I see this principle in more formal research about how innovators create new markets. For example, researchers at Stanford found that in creating the new e-commerce markets, early entrepreneurs imagined the future market first, brought together familiar metaphors like the “shopping cart” to make this imagined new industry feel real, and then assembled a coalition to create the new market. Likewise, researchers at Stanford and Oxford found that in the pre-smartphone market, entrepreneurs trying to create mobile games struggled to get the attention of giants like AT&T and Nokia. How did they overcome? They painted a vision of the future market, approached giants, like AT&T, and told them they were already in discussions with the other giant, Nokia. Immediately the executives at Nokia paid attention and would meet to discuss opportunities. The entrepreneurs then ran over to AT&T and spoke about how they were working with Nokia. In essence, they were bridging two worlds to create a new future “As If” it were already true.
Indeed, in our work with visionary innovators, the one consistent theme we see is that they envision a future and work towards it, “As If” it were already true. Of course, they iterate and adapt as they go. But one of the major emerging theories of strategy suggests that imagining the world “As If” may be one of the core strategic tasks for leaders who want to create new products, markets, or industries. We would argue that it is one of the most powerful tools for facing uncertainty well and the more a leader can tap into the underlying principle, the more inspiring and effective they will be as a leader.
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