Hope Is Not A Strategy

I recently had a weekly call with one of my clients, a middle manager caught in the tension between waiting and action.

On our call, we discussed the challenges he is facing, specifically about what will happen if he needs to make cuts to his team. If this needs to happen, he said he will have to focus on keeping the people who are multidimensional. The ones who can enable the team to do more with less.

Our conversation shifted to another project that carried a great deal of uncertainty for him. I noticed he was using a lot of ‘might’s’, ‘maybe’s’, and ‘could be’s’. He then dropped the H word. Hope.

I get it. Hope is real. Hope is important, but I catch my clients every time they use that word.

Because hope isn’t a strategy.

I challenged him on it. He responded by saying, “well, what do I do? Do I just wait to get the information and adapt to whatever I’m told?”

My response: “What would someone who’s multidimensional do?”

I told him the kind of leader I’d want on my team is someone who picked the worst case scenario and then started planning for it. Someone who thought about ways to navigate the nuances of the worst case.

Imagine if a leader came to you to communicate challenging news and you met that information with suggestions on how to navigate it. You show them that you’ve already put a lot of work into this and are two steps ahead instead of reactionary.

Rather than wait – plan for what could be really hard to deal with.

There was a long pause on our call and I asked him, “So what are you going to do?”

He said he was going to engage with his team so they could be a part of the planning for the most challenging situations. They would forecast the worst and seek clarity on what they could do to lessen the impact and get ahead of the chaos.

It’s times like these where we need to demonstrate resourcefulness, plan for the worst and build a level of certainty and confidence that will increase the likelihood that you lead gracefully. Do not wait and hope.

Hope is not a strategy.

After you’ve rolled up your sleeves and done the work to prepare for the worst, that’s when you can hope - when you no longer rely on it.