Taking the red pill

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

So Morpheus warns Neo in The Matrix (1999) of the risks of seeing the world as you think or wish it to be and the world as it really is. Where the blue pill can symbolize idealized dreams, “taking the red pill” has become a popular cultural reference for swallowing the sometimes painful truth of reality. Spoiler alert: Neo took the red pill and it allowed for 136 minutes of movie action and two sequels. (Not a bad leadership move!) These two pills are a useful (if somewhat stretched) model for understanding this same tension in leadership.

Recognition. Leaders begin the journey when they understand that there are two pills. We assume a new leadership position and dream of change; we can imagine an ideal “blue pill” world. It is a core competency of leadership to envision a future that doesn’t yet exist. But our initial expectations and timelines can be unreasonable. Within days or weeks in our new positions we flex our clairvoyance and see what must change in order to make what we imagine real. We attempt to execute the plan to realize our vision of the future as quickly as the vision takes shape.

“What thing that you asked us to do last week would you like us to stop doing so we can do the things you are asking us to do today?” a blunt but exasperated subordinate asked me within a few months of my becoming hospital commander (chief executive officer) a decade ago. I am still thankful for the candor of this young leader. He handed me the red pill.

Resignation. Time, energy and focus are finite. People have limits. They can only do so much. In some cases resources are constrained, especially when we operate in austere environments. We do not have the materials, the facilities or even the operating procedures that we need to accomplish what must be done. As leaders we see the needs yet feel the limitations more acutely than anyone else in the organization.  Change is needed, but few seem to share the same sense of urgency.  They have to face reality: despite limitations, we change or perish. We have to share the red pill.

Resolve. My friend and mentor Loren Lasher taught me that a rocket whose trajectory is shifted by one degree looks at takeoff to be on an unaltered path. But at ten, fifty and one hundred miles from launch it has clearly taken a new direction. Sometimes all we can do is move the dial by degrees. But that is exactly the work of leadership: to identify what dials can be turned, determine which ones should be turned first and then to convince those who hold the dials – sometimes in a white-knuckled death grip – to turn the dials with us. Even a few degrees will eventually result in a new direction. Knowing that it may take time, we have to believe that over the long haul we can make the world that we imagine together a reality. We need to convince those we lead to make and to take this blue pill with us.

Recognition:
Leadership involves tension: there will be difficult, near-impossible choices.

Resignation:
Reality is sometimes stubbornly reluctant to change. (That’s a red pill for all leaders.)

Resolve:
Despite the red pill realities, we will turn the dials daily – even by degrees – in order to create and to realize the vision of a new, blue pill world.

Chuck Callahan Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front https://henryv43.wordpress.com/