Shoichi Yokoi syndrome
What governs the market is not luck but a conjunction of logical and almost always predictable factors. And the sum of the current factors, multiplied by the indices and divided by the quota of effort of each one, almost always results in a perspective of growth.
Many companies are already adjusting to give up when those heating signals, which will sooner or later arrive, become market reality. They plan actions, adjust structures, redefine strategies, train staff. As well as an army that does all the maneuvers at night to be ready for the attack already in the first rays of the dawn.
But despite all these signs that experience has already taught us to recognize and predict the effects, I found another day a businessman who was completely reticent about the future. His attachment to pessimism was a shield to the test of any argument or common sense. He had already incorporated the “crisis entity”. His conversation was interspersed with the famous and empty phrase: “This country has no way. I want to sell everything and go to Miami. ”
This businessman reminded me of a story of a Japanese WWII soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, who spent 26 years hiding in the Guam jungle, refusing to believe that the conflict was over and Japan surrendered. He resisted the post, waiting for the imperial forces, supported by a diet of nuts, blackberries, snails and eventually rats. When he was rescued and really noticed the defeat, he said: “It is with great shame that I return.”
In these 26 years in the jungle, Soichi lost the great opportunity to see the country rebuilt and become one of the great winners of the technological race and one of the greatest powers in the world. Soichi paid a heavy price for not believing that peace had already arrived.
After years of involuntary exile, all he could do was feel shame and pity for himself. The same feelings that have been affecting some businessmen and executives who, once entrenched in the defense, hear nothing more than their own complaints, no longer believe in new growth times and do not know how to attack.
While these entrepreneurs are isolating themselves from the reality and contaminating their collaborators, competitors are gaining ground and defining strategies to lay flags in the spaces that will be left. Signs of change will come.
Which side do you want to be on?
Until the next letter of the month!
Denis Mello
CEO