The population of Finland is just over five million. There are fewer Finns in the world than New Yorkers. This tiny, cold Nordic country—so far north that, in the depth of winter, they get barely six hours of daylight—has been invaded numerous times by larger, more powerful neighbors. Whether those meteorological and historical challenges contribute to how Finns see themselves is a good question. Regardless, it is undeniable that the Finns see themselves as among the world’s grittiest people.
The closest word to grit in Finnish is sisu (pronounced see-sue). The translation isn’t perfect. Grit specifies having a passion to accomplish a particular top-level goal and the perseverance to follow through. Sisu, on the other hand, is really just about perseverance. In particular, sisu refers to a source of inner strength—a sort of psychological capital—that Finns believe they’re born with by dint of their Finnish heritage. Quite literally, sisu refers to the insides of a person, their guts.
In 1939, Finland was the underdog in the Winter War, battling a Soviet army that boasted three times as many soldiers, thirty times as many aircraft, and a hundred times as many tanks. Finnish troops held their ground for several months—dramatically longer than the Soviets or anyone else might have expected. In 1940, Time magazine ran a feature on sisu:
The Finns have something they call sisu. It is a compound of bravado and bravery, of ferocity and tenacity, of the ability to keep fighting after most people would have quit, and to fight with the will to win. The Finns translate sisu as “the Finnish spirit” but it is a much more gutful word than that.
In the same year, the New York Times ran a feature called “Sisu: A Word That Explains Finland.” A Finn explained his countrymen to the journalist this way: “A typical Finn is an obstinate sort of fellow who believes in getting the better of bad fortune by proving that he can stand worse.”
When I lecture on grit to my undergraduate classes, I like to include a brief digression on sisu. I ask my students the rhetorical question: Can we forge a culture—as Seahawks coach Pete Carroll clearly thinks we can—that celebrates and supports such qualities as sisu and grit?
A few years ago, by complete coincidence, a young Finnish woman named Emilia Lahti was in the audience when I mentioned sisu. After the lecture, she rushed to greet me and confirmed that my outsider view of sisu was correct. We agreed there was a pressing need for a systematic investigation of sisu, how Finns think about it, how it’s propagated.
Emilia became my graduate student the next year, completing her master’s thesis on exactly those questions. She asked a thousand Finns how they thought about sisu and discovered that most have a growth mindset about its development. When asked, “Do you think sisu can be learned or developed through conscious effort?” 83 percent said, “Yes.” One respondent then offered: “For example, participation in Finnish scouting association jaunts, where thirteen-year-olds may be in charge of ten-year-olds alone in the woods, seems to have some correlation with sisu.”
As a scientist, I don’t take seriously the notion that Finns, or members of any other nationality, have actual reserves of energy hidden in their intestines, awaiting release at the critical moment. Still, there are two powerful lessons we can take from sisu.
First, thinking of yourself as someone who is able to overcome tremendous adversity often leads to behavior that confirms that self-conception. If you’re a Finn with that “sisu spirit,” you get up again no matter what. Likewise, if you’re a Seattle Seahawk, you’re a competitor. You have what it takes to succeed. You don’t let setbacks hold you back. Grit is who you are.
Second, even if the idea of an actual inner energy source is preposterous, the metaphor couldn’t be more apt. It sometimes feels like we have nothing left to give, and yet, in those dark and desperate moments, we find that if we just keep putting one foot in front of the other, there is a way to accomplish what all reason seems to argue against.
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The idea of sisu has been integral to Finnish culture for centuries. But cultures can be created in much shorter time frames. In my quest to understand what gives rise to grit, I’ve encountered a few organizations with especially gritty leaders at the helm who, in my view, have successfully forged a culture of grit.
Consider, for example, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Jamie isn’t the only one of the bank’s 250,000-plus employees who says, “I wear this jersey and I bleed this blood.” Other employees much lower in the ranks say things like “What I do every day for our clients actually matters. No one here is insignificant. And every detail, every employee, matters. . . . I am proud to be part of this great company.”
Jamie has been the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States, for more than a decade. In the 2008 financial crisis, Jamie steered his bank to safety, and while other banks collapsed entirely, JPMorgan Chase somehow turned a $5 billion profit.
Coincidentally, the motto of Jamie’s prep school alma mater, the Browning School, is “grytte,” an Old English version of grit defined in an 1897 yearbook as “firmness, courage, determination . . . which alone win the crown of genuine success in all undertakings.” In Jamie’s senior year at Browning, his calculus teacher had a heart attack, and the substitute teacher didn’t know calculus. Half the boys quit; the other half, including Jamie, decided to stick with it and spent the entire year in a separate classroom, alone, teaching themselves.
“You have to learn to get over bumps in the road and mistakes and setbacks,” he told me when I called to talk about the culture he’s built at JPMorgan Chase. “Failures are going to happen, and how you deal with them may be the most important thing in whether you succeed. You need fierce resolve. You need to take responsibility. You call it grit. I call it fortitude.”
Fortitude is to Jamie Dimon what sisu is to Finland. Jamie recalls that getting fired from Citibank at age thirty-three, and then taking a full year to ponder what lessons to take from the episode, made him a better leader. And he believes in fortitude enough to make it a core value for the entire JPMorgan Chase bank. “The ultimate thing is that we need to grow over time.”
Is it really possible, I asked, for a leader to influence the culture of such an enormous corporation? True, the culture of JPMorgan Chase has, with some affection, been described as “the cult of Jamie.” But there are literally thousands and thousands of JPMorgan Chase employees Jamie has never met in person.
“Absolutely,” Jamie says. “It takes relentless—absolutely relentless—communication. It’s what you say and how you say it.”
It may also be how often you say it. By all accounts, Jamie is a tireless evangelist, crossing the country to appear at what he calls town hall meetings with his employees. At one meeting he was asked, “What do you look for in your leadership team?” His answer? “Capability, character, and how they treat people.” Later, he told me that he asks himself two questions about senior management. First: “Would I let them run the business without me?” Second: “Would I let my kids work for them?”