As a CEO, are you excessively optimistic or conspiratorially pessimistic?

The reason why I asked that question is because this week I had a chance to meet up with two colleagues. One of them is a good friend and we kind of had two extremes. 

In one case one of my friends who's a CEO was very, very negative about where he was, about the situation where he lives, his country, and it was difficult to listen to. Another one, he taught me the very great Hanlon's razor: ‘Which never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity’. This guy was just a tremendous technology optimist and was fun to be with as well, both very fun to be with.

It's tough as a CEO and a founder to navigate these two extremes. I'm an optimist by nature, but this can lead to denial. This kind of panglossian and extreme optimism, especially in the face of really difficult and unrelieved hardship, can just be over the top.

At the same time, pessimism can descend into conspiracy. I remember a friend who was a CEO once saying to me “Hey, just because there isn't a conspiracy, doesn't mean that they're not out to get me.” Which is a great summary of just this worry that people are out to get you, and when you don't know why someone is behaving in a certain way, it's very easy to assume the very, very worst.

I do often fall back to that Hanlon's razor quote to not just attribute to malice when really there could just be mistakes made. I think as a CEO it's really important that we embrace where we're coming from, and embrace who we are by nature and just make sure that we're balanced with this. 

So as an optimist, I would say for me, I need to spend more time thinking about what is going wrong. This week I'm trying to do that. I'm trying to ask myself “What is going wrong with my business?” I want to dwell on it. I want to grip it. I want to address it.

For those that are pessimists, I would encourage you to think about, “How can you inspire attention to an issue?” Inspire action. “How can he cast the vision so that people will address an issue and want to solve it with you?” So it's the inspiration. The vision.