At the recent TedXBrighton event, where the theme for the day was Reasons to be Cheerful: An Optimistic look forward, Sally Kettle gave an inspiring talk on how to achieve your goals . A couple of things she said struck a chord, one of which came back to me today as I sat with a colleague talking over the workshop we will be delivering soon as part of the Business Action on Homelessness programme for the Business Community Partnership in Brighton.
Hope is not an action plan
When working with clients – whether at an organisational, group or individual level – conversation often comes round to the gap between aspiration and achievement, goal setting vs goal attainment, planning vs delivering. And in the context of organisations – whether commercial or public sector, charity or social enterprise, the language of ‘hope’ is not particularly valued as it rarely moves things forward. Hope is indeed not an action plan and don’t organisations just love plans…
And yet where there is hope, despair often lurks. Mark Hughes, for example, is the only person I know of who is actively researching the nature of hope and despair in organisations. In the context of working with clients who have had experience of homelessness and are looking to get back into employment, where you sit on the ‘Hope-Despair Continuum will in no small part dictate how resourced you believe you are in terms devising a plan, let alone acting upon it. And arguably, so long as you are sitting on that line, you are not actually moving anywhere; the sole difference is one position feels ‘hopeful’ and the other ‘despairing’. The personal fallout may differ hugely, the inertia is the same.
So what is the learning here? Two things occur to me. Neither hope nor despair in themselves may be enough to catalyze ‘positive’ change, and having an action plan is fine so long as you are equipped – emotionally and relationally, and in terms of relevant skills and resources available to you – to use it. Equally, hope and despair may not appear overtly in organisations, yet often breaks through in other ways. Two examples to be going on with: notice the conversations around any redundancy programme, or whenever a ‘them & us’ dynamic becomes entrenched.
And the irony is, in just such patterns lies the potential for change, if you can identify the conditions that are creating them.
As John Cleese says in Clockwise “It’s not the despair I can’t bear, it’s the hope”.
How is hope is related to optimism? As discussed by Martin Seligman in eg, Learned Optimism.
In any case I think I prefer Jim Collin’s distinction between optimism and pessimism using the Stockdale Paradox.
I have always found the idea that we keep going because we will get there *in the end* the most personally inspiring.
Had to look up the Stockdale paradox – I like it!
There is maybe a distinction to be made between active & passive versions of both optimism and pessimism, and the conditions that exist/are created around them.