Instrument to Measure the Impact of Hope in Strategic Plan Implementation

Introduction

Hope. There are songs, businesses, books, and movies about hope. Merriam Webster’s (2021) dictionary closely relates hope to a wish. Hope is a word many people use and few indeed practice. What is hope? More importantly, what role does hope play in organizations? Do leaders use it to inspire followers to take action? Many have said they hope a particular event or thing will happen, but how many have thought about what they mean when they say they hope something will happen? Synonyms of hope include wish, dream, desire, expectation, ambition, craving, yearning; yet, none of these are action-oriented. None of these synonyms help the person move towards action to make their hope a reality. They imply the person will sit back and wait on the wish to come true. Charles Snyder was one of the first to truly begin to operationalize hope and provide an actionable definition to the word hope. Snyder defined hope as “goal-directed thinking” (Snyder & Lopez, 2007).

Thus, for the first time, establishing hope may have an action component. Since Snyder’s definition of hope was first promoted in 2000, leaders of organizations have struggled to measure hope within their organizations (Winston et al., 2008), specifically related to strategic plan implementation. Hence the development of “An Instrument to Measure the Impact of Hope in Strategic Plan Implementation.” This was the first attempt to operationalize and measure the impact of hope during strategic plan implementation. Leaders in any organization should seek to understand the amount of hope an organization’s employees have about the organization’s strategic plan because of Snyder's concept of goal-directed thinking. Goal-directed thinking says if an individual believes they have the capabilities and resources to carry out the strategic plan, they are more likely to do so (Snyder, 2000). Snyder’s hope theory says an individual must set a goal for themselves, then determine their path to achieve that goal, followed by the agency or positive thinking to carry it through (Snyder, 2000). This appears to work differently in organizations where leaders are setting the goals for employees. This removes employee autonomy to set goals and forces them to determine the path and agency to attain a plan given to them. This cognitive appraisal is what Winston et al. sought to measure. Winston et al. wanted to know to what extent employees' assessment of pathways and agency inform the amount of hope employees have in implementing a strategic plan.