A leader’s primary reason for being is to instill hope.

Think about it: Why would an employee want to work for you? Because they hope for a stable life and valuable work, with people who make it interesting.

Why would a customer want to buy from you? Because they hope you’ll fix their problem or address a need they have.

This is why we plan for the future. Not only because the future is the only thing we can change, but because humans are designed to hope for a future better than today. Everybody has a different definition of “better”, sure, but it would be hard to argue that we’re seeking a future worse than what we’ve experienced so far.

This is why we don’t just create a strategic plan and then impose it on the organization like we would program a computer. No, we must build peoples’ understanding and inspiration, so that they internalize a hope that this will be interesting, valuable, and create a future worthy of putting in the hard work. Even worth taking a bit of risk.

There are situations where the future looks bleak, and people can fall into despair. I was in a situation once where I was forced to shut down a team due to a broader reorganization. On its face, things looked hopeless.

So what did we do to build hope in our team? We committed to these goals:

  • We will do our best to make this painless for our customers.
  • We will actively help the new team coming in to take over our work.
  • We can celebrate our accomplishments and how much fun it was to work together.
  • We will do our absolute best to find a best fit job for every person on the team.
  • We will do this together.

It was an emotional time, for sure, but we did indeed accomplish each one of these goals. And people on that team remain friends to this day, some thirty years later.

I’ve learned that hope is quite different from growing the business.