img

Summary. These are challenging times to stay energized and upbeat (乐观的，积极向上的). The author offers four pieces of advice to help make you and your colleagues more optimistic: 1) Insist on crisp execution (干脆利落的执行), but make room for “organizational foolishness (组织上的愚蠢)”; 2) Invite everyone to become a problem-solver, then give them room to fix things (给他们解决问题的空间); 3) Don’t just champion new ideas; strengthen personal relationships; and 4) To counter so much bad news, share every piece of good news.

These are trying times for optimists. Covid deaths remain tragically high. Job growth remains stubbornly (顽固地；倔强地) low. So many of our colleagues and kids are feeling stressed, exhausted, angry — “hitting the pandemic wall.” No wonder a recent front-page (头版的,头条) article in the Wall Street Journal, which has chronicled (编年史，年代记) the Covid-driven struggles of companies and universities, highlighted a crisis at a different kind of organization — Optimist International, a 110-year-old club with chapters (分会，章节) around the world. Membership is now at 60,000, down from a high of 190,000, although club leaders remain true to their guiding spirit. “When you hit rock bottom, the only direction you can go is up,” said one chapter head, who declared she was “getting my optimistic groove back.”

It’s important for all of us to get our optimistic groove back. John Gardner, the **fabled** (传说中的) scholar of leadership whose insights have influenced generations of executives, argued that positive change rarely starts from blind faith or naïveté, but it also doesn’t start from despair or defeatism (失败主义). “The first and last task of a leader is to keep hope alive,” he wrote in 1968, another period of turmoil (混乱，骚动) and struggle. “We need to believe in ourselves and our future but not to believe that life is easy.”

In other words, leaders help their colleagues be realists — and optimists. But whether you’re running a company or managing a team, how do you keep your colleagues upbeat when the whole world is feeling down? How do you keep hope alive when things seem pretty hopeless? Here are four pieces of advice, drawn from renowned thinkers on organizational life, innovation, even meditation, that I’m optimistic will help you shape a more positive future.

See you tomorrow