Hope is what you have left when you cannot take action. Hope can sustain us as individuals, but within organizations, we can’t rely on hope. Yet how often have you heard some senior official lament that “we can only hope things get better”?
We can say that managing through the challenges in our operation involves leadership, effective operations and the execution of good strategy. Relying on hope leaves these words as nouns, whereas the act of leadership and execution should make them verbs. Verbs are actions; we have a responsibility to execute.