“Hope” is something we should think about every time we embark on change: Part 2. The comments on my last post about hope being grounded in operational reality (from a paper by Alyson Meister, Nele Dael & David Bach), from across multiple social channels, were outstanding. Sadly I only have space for some of them. Rory van der Merwe shared a 2025 Gallup poll that reframes the discussion. Hope isn't a "soft" add-on. Asked what they want most from leaders, followers put hope top at 56%, ahead of trust (33%), care & compassion (7%), & certainty (4%). Five themes stood out from the comments: 1) Hope requires infrastructure, not just intent. Commenters rejected the idea that hope can be "willed" into existence. Jonathan Sunkersing called "inflated hope" a systemic risk in primary care, where grand narratives substitute for diagnosis & resources. Paula Beattie noted teams with focus, agency & infrastructure can achieve a lot quickly, but multi-team change falters without proper leadership & structure. Rebecca Blackwood added a governance angle: mobilising hope is structurally impossible when a board withholds permission for leaders to be wrong or take risks. 2) Small steps & agency build durable hope. Richard Perry argued anticipation-driven hope depletes like a finite reserve, while small, real, felt results build confidence that's self-renewing. Lisa Evans offered a three-part formula: team, facts, small joint steps. Chris Cooper added that strategy without a credible "how" is empty, pointing to the power of Plan-Do-Check-Adjust. 3) Hope is co-created in relationships, earned incrementally. John-Paul Crofton-Biwer described hope as quick to spark, but earned through repeated, consistent action, and lost the moment that consistency breaks. Christina Jones & Søren Wieck Mellemgaard stressed credibility comes from naming hard truths & visible follow-through, not inspiring language. Kenny Ajayi noted hope starts with honest diagnosis, often overlooked when leaders rush to paint a vision. Amos Y. added it also needs a visible path forward. 4) Hope as constant discipline, not crisis response. Barbara Perry argued hope should be a daily companion, not something pulled out only during disruption. Victoria Hewitt shared a moving account of using stabilising & mobilising hope with a small team in a dysfunctional system. Noel Hatch described how his team's stabilising rituals, like weekly spotlights on less-visible teams, evolved into mobilising hope. 5) Broader & dissenting voices. Tatu Piirainen linked credible hope to how well an organisation's value-creation logic fits its environment. Douglas Anweiler flagged the risk of treating hope as a management tool rather than daily practice. Jack Ricchiuto distinguished "having hope" from "being hope". Kathryn L. Goetzke connected hope science to SDG progress & mental health outcomes. Together, the comments reinforce the article's core claim: hope is constructed through experience, not declared through rhetoric. We can't "message" our way to hope, we have to demonstrate it.

“Hope” is something we should think about every time we embark on change in organisations and systems. A new @HarvardBiz article by Alyson Meister, Nele Dael and David Bach (“For Hope to Inspire, It Has to Be Grounded in Organizational Reality”) provides insight for everyone leading change, especially in health and care. Our sector is saturated with aspiration-heavy narratives: “transformation,” “integration,” “prevention,” “AI-enabled futures” etc, etc. But the lived experience for many colleagues is different: constraint-heavy, change overload, fatigue, rising demand. Having a sense of hope drives change, but the authors say we need to think about two factors. Both of them contribute to hope but can lead to very different outcomes: - Aspiration (the future people are invited to work toward) - Credibility (how far that future aligns with the reality people feel). They set out four forms of hope based on these factors (see the graphic). Often we see “Inflated hope” (high aspiration, low credibility). Leaders promise transformation without the clarity or resources to deliver it and change (and trust) fizzles out. The two kinds of hope we should make the most of are: -“Stabilising hope” (low aspiration, high credibility), particularly in times of high disruption and uncertainty, where we focus on morale, psychological safety and what we can achieve this week. - “Mobilising hope” (high aspiration, high credibility). Needed greatly in our systems now: a compelling vision matched by robust diagnosis, clear pathways towards the future and visible follow‑through. It means people can see how their actions today build tomorrow’s better health and care system. The most important idea I take from this article is not to “be hopeful,” but that hope is constructed through experience, not declared through rhetoric. Credibility is the currency of change. People are constantly assessing: “Does this make sense given what I know to be true?” In complex systems like health and care, our colleagues are highly attuned to misalignment. We can’t “message” our way to hope, we have to demonstrate it. Three things this means in practice: 1) Ground the present: Our colleagues don’t need protecting from reality. They need help making sense of it. Naming constraints (“we don’t yet have the workforce”) actually increases trust. 2) Calibrate aspiration: Big visions matter, but timing matters more. Often the work is: stabilise today, improve tomorrow, transform over time. 3) Make pathways towards the future visible: If people can’t see what they can do differently on Monday morning, how that links to outcomes and how leaders will respond when things don’t go to plan, then hope never converts into action. For change leaders, this is much more than a communication skill: it’s a relational and behavioural practice. It’s built through consistency, integrity and visible follow-through. People don’t need leaders who promise a better future; they need leaders who help them see how they can build it from where they are. The article: hbr.org/2026/06/for-hope-to-….