Every successful business idea starts with hope.
Getting results over the long term requires more than an intellectual creativity for coming up with new ideas. It demands emotional attachment.
You can cut employees. You can trim budgets and eliminate redundancies. You can pay down debt and increase shareholder value. Those are all proven initiatives to make an enterprise healthier, but those strategies doesn’t fix the hopelessness that your company feels.
They don’t give your company a reason to keep trying.
Perhaps not in public when the boss is listening, or in the boardroom when ideas are being debated — but in the quiet moments when the hype is gone, that hopelessness shines through.
It cripples your momentum and handicaps your big plans for growth and recovery.
No matter what you goal is your plan needs to start with creating hope because your people need a reason to become high performers. They need a reason to think beyond what is right now. They need a shock of inspiration to rise beyond the frustrations of the daily grind.
Hope begins the process of recovery.
If your plan for success doesn’t start with hope, then you’re just creating ideas that will never end up actually working. Because to be a winner, people need a reason to want to try harder - and that starts with hope.
This post originally appeared at EdgyConversations.