Hope Itself Is Not the Answer
But without it, it’s impossible to lead
“How little the fear of misfortune is then capable of balancing the hope of good luck.” — Adam Smith, 1776
We all need to be motivated.
The craving for motivation is almost as universal as the need to be appreciated, and it can be found in a teenager’s entropy-adjacent room, in the sapped morale of beleaguered employees, or in the low rates of civic participation in a public attuned to the media’s incessant drumbeat of negative news.
Motivation rooted in fear isn’t motivation at all. “The floggings will continue until morale improves” is apocryphal and nearly universally understood, capturing the sheer lunacy of supposed encouragement by trepidation.
Leaders care about the mental and emotional state of their people as well as their output.
They care enough to speak to them and give them as sense of hope as they address challenges and chart a path into the future.
At such times, hope is a necessary talisman to ward ourselves against the dangers of pessimism, fear, and despair.
To hope is to put our belief in the unknown.
To hope is to try new things.
To hope is to change.
But hope itself isn’t enough: “hope is not a strategy,” as those who wish to counter the joy and anticipation of hope will tell us. And to a degree, they have a point.
By itself, hope is not a strategy. It’s not a goal, nor is it a plan.
Leaders need a vision, goals, a strategy, and a plan to be effective. Let’s review:
Vision: Where you want to go
Goal: What you want to achieve
Strategy: Why and how you want to do it
Plan: The specific actions you'll take to get there
Hope isn’t any one of those.
And yet, we cannot deny that hope plays a significant role in assuring our success.
During Colombia’s civil war, when state negotiators wanted to encourage hostages held by FARC, they commissioned a local producer in 2010 to create a pop song embedded with a Morse-code message and had it broadcast repeatedly on the radio in rebel-controlled areas.
After the lyrics “Listen to this message, brother,” the code sounded as a synth interlude: “Nineteen people rescued. You are next. Don’t lose hope.”
In that case, hope was not the plan, strategy, or goal. Hope was a necessary (and literal) undertone to the effort.
The Stockdale Paradox, named for Admiral James Stockdale, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, reminds us that optimism (a proxy for hope) is not enough:
“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on hope. Hope and change. But hope itself was not and is not the answer.
Reality matters. Action matters.
Do something.
There’s so much to learn,
One More Thing…
Hope is a recurring theme around here, explored over the years in many different varieties. Check out all of the Timeless & Timely entries tagged with “Hope.”
Here’s just a sample:
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Nice topic and assessment Scott on Hope. Hope may not be a strategy but when all else that logic may try to initiate as with the examples you shown, hope keeps our mind and attitude focused when the intellect does not see a way. Louis Silvie Zamperini a WWII war veteran spent 28 months in a Japanese prison camp after surviving a hard ordeal at sea. Many may say it was Hope that kept his resilience throughout the sea survival (thinking back on his mother's homemade pasta and wanting to get back home) and also surviving an evil prison Commander that tested his every fiber of existence.