Matt Peterson

Thinking positively about ourselves, the members of our communities, and the policies of our institutions is highly regarded, and rightly so. Under normal circumstances, accentuating the positive is the path to success.

But what happens when significant change is required? I was struck by a statement attributed to Greg Helmstetter, CEO of myGoals.com: "If you don't identify the issues preventing you from reaching your goal, you won't be able to overcome them."

It seems the same is true when significant change is called for within communities, enterprises, governments, or institutions. And it is exactly in the social context that "think positive" can be a determent. Honest attempts to call out the need for change and to identify the barriers to that change can be dismissed as being "too negative." Social pressures to be supportive of the community, loyal to the tribe, and to "go along to get along" can all be reactionary.

The significant social change of 1960s America was driven not by well-respected members of various communities' establishments but by social outsiders without a strong investment in the status quo. African-Americans facing pervasive discrimination and violence and young people facing wartime conscription are two examples. Likewise, Gandhi was not a card-carrying member of the Anglo-Indian elite that ruled the subcontinent in his time.

There is a parallel in business. Entrepreneurs with little to lose and much to gain are most likely to revolutionize a business. Established winners have little incentive to change the game. Only by "thinking negatively" about what everyone else accepts as the established order can one formulate a positive alternative vision.