Hope is not a strategy?

"People acting with sustained commitment to achieve their visions of hope are the creators of their future." - Bertrand de Jouvenel

We have all heard / or used the saying: 'Hope is not a strategy'.

The word itself, 'hope', is a verb that has the meaning of 'having an optimistic mindset that something good will happen in the future'.

So yes, by itself, simply having an optimistic mindset that something good will happen in the future is not enough to ensure that this specific desire actually materialises.

But strategy without hope is ineffective.

Without a hopeful (emotionally-charged) belief that a sustained commitment to acting in a particular way will bring about a better future, motivation to act will evaporate...and progress will come to an end.

Hope may not be all that there is, but it is a very big part of successful strategy.

The danger is that simply saying overly-simplistic things like 'hope is not a strategy' could inadvertently lead some people to believe that hope shouldn't play a part in the process of strategy crafting.

And nothing could be further from the truth.