One of the pioneers of the Total Quality movement, W. Edwards Deming, famously proclaimed, Drive out fear so that everyone may work more effectively for the company. But after attending a quality conference in the 1990s devoted to Deming’s proposition, the authors felt somehow drained; talking about fear seemed to have sucked the life out of the entire audience. They began to wonder if it was a vicious circle; what if focusing on fear, even in an effort to drive it out, actually kept you in fear? What if the conversation were shifted to hope-not to negate or invalidate fear but to bring energy to the more life-enhancing side of the equation?

Putting Hope to Work is their response to these questions. Drawing upon the authors’ many years of research and management consulting, it presents a pragmatic approach to identifying, supporting, and sustaining hope and channeling it toward productive ends to create more vibrant, creative, collaborative-and successful-workplaces. Integrating insights from fields as diverse as anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and biology, Hutson and Perry identify the five key principles of hope-possibility, agency, worth, openness, and connection-and demonstrate how they can be developed in any type of organization. Featuring dozens of in-depth examples and personal experiences from a wide variety of organizations, as well as tools for applying hope toward effective leadership, decision making, problem solving, and communication, the authors offer a multi-dimensional approach to leadership that is both inspiring and practical, tapping into a universal desire to produce work that is as meaningful as it is profitable.