Admiral Jim Stockdale was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for eight years. He was tortured more than twenty times. He had no idea when, or whether, he would be released. He survived. Many of his fellow prisoners did not. Collins asked Stockdale who did not make it out. Stockdale answered without hesitation: the optimists. The ones who said, 'We will be out by Christmas.' When Christmas came and went, they said Easter. When Easter passed, Thanksgiving. 'They died of a broken heart,' Stockdale said. But Stockdale himself maintained an absolute belief that he would eventually get out, that the experience would prove to be the defining one of his life, that he would turn it into something meaningful. He held two things together that seem to be in contradiction: he never denied the brutal reality of his situation, and he never lost faith in the eventual outcome. Collins found the same quality in the leaders of every good-to-great company. They faced the hardest facts without flinching. Falling behind a competitor, a market that was moving against them, a strategy that was not working: they named these realities clearly and dealt with them directly. At the same time, they never lost their fundamental conviction that the organisation would come through. False optimism kills, because reality eventually catches up. Despair kills, because it removes the motivation to keep working. The paradox is that holding both, clear sight and unshakeable faith, is what actually produces survival and success.