How to keep your reliance on hope to a minimum

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here!

So reads the description over the gate of Hell in Dante Alighieri’s epic poem Divine Comedy.

It should be the inscription of your office door, or perhaps a slogan you recite before a sales call.

Not that you are about to enter a hellish situation, but hope is a pernicious little devil that can cause you all kinds of problems in business if you don’t root it out and minimize its effect on your decision making.

You have undoubtedly heard the expression “hope is not a strategy.” What that means is that your strategy can’t rely on miracles, finger-crossing, lucky socks, whatever.

Since nothing is certain in this world (except for problems, taxes, and death), we can’t know for sure if any of our plans will work. So a little hope that the odds will be ever in our favor is normal. However, we need to do the best we can to minimize the impact of hope in our planning, or else we’re going to blow a great deal of money, creative energy, and employee morale on poor results.

What’s the problem with hope? Read the rest at The Business Journals.