Optimism Is Not a Strategy — or Is It?

Recently, I was prompted to reflect on the idea of whether or not optimism is a strategy.

I suppose it’s true that part of being a successful leader in higher education, or elsewhere, is exuding a certain level of optimism about the institution’s future. We see this characteristic demonstrated all the time, but it is especially noticeable when a change is underway that has been designed to address or fix a current problem or, as we are taught to say, a current challenge.

Leadership requires a certain level of optimism and belief that problems can be successfully addressed and fixed or at least mitigated by thoughtful and intelligent people. Our disciplines teach us that truth. We form committees to bring the best thinking, presumably by the best thinkers on the issue in the institution, and charge them to essentially both analyze the issue fully and to propose a range of solutions or fixes to what worked so well in the past but seems to be increasingly irrelevant — even dysfunctional — in time present.

When “ultimately” — and I use that term in deference to our habit in higher education of following the motto “Why do in a short period of time what we could easily accomplish in a longer period, as long as it is done before exams in the spring semester?” — a fix is proposed and has been fully debated, the leader then blesses it and goes about both advocating for the change and optimistically saying that the future is now attended to successfully.

Of course, we want our leaders, beginning with our department chair or division head, to believe in the work we have crafted and to advocate for it convincingly. Who would support a leader who was inclined to mope — perpetually a dour pessimist about any and perhaps all issues? Could such a person even be hired in any leadership role?

But suppose for a moment that our institutional, as well as our personal, preference for leaders who are optimistic about our collective ability to fix all sorts of problems, which have a nasty habit of popping up at inopportune moments, is dysfunctional at a certain level.

Perhaps here is where I should, in the interest of full disclosure, admit that I have always been an advocate for and devotee of optimistic approaches to life in general. In every position I was fortunate enough to serve in, I firmly believed in our ability — especially with a talented and intelligent workforce such as we are blessed with in higher education — to deal successfully with any and all challenges that confront us.

That said, upon reflection, it has occurred to me that perhaps it isn’t optimism per se that drives this belief. Could it be that there is something more fundamental at work that helps shape the optimistic spirit?

I think so.

The key to my current thinking on these matters lies in another sphere, that of the pessimist. In juxtaposing the spirit of the optimist with the dispirit of the pessimist, one discovers what I think is the ultimate truism: optimism may not be a strategy, but neither is pessimism.

We are fond of saying to ourselves and aspiring leaders as well that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This is, in short, a call to surrender. That sounds to me like a very pessimistic way of looking to lead imperative institutional change.

Suppose that we turn that paradigm on its head? By that I mean suppose we optimistic people decide to take advantage of culture to achieve necessary and essential changes in our institutions as they venture forward in these uncertain and, some would say, perilous times for higher education.

Another way of approaching all issues, but especially the toughest and perhaps even the existential ones, could well be to broaden our reliance on who we actually are as a community to include more than our problem-solving prowess. Suppose we incorporate our personal and institutional values — our core beliefs however labeled — in order to define success and meet the challenges of an uncertain future.

In my experience as an observer and actor in higher education for the last six decades, the role of the leader is to get results that matter to the institution – that is to say, its people – as they are expressed in value-laden documents beginning with those that were in play at the founding of the institution and ending with the current strategic plan.

If we are to do that, the key questions become clear. Who are we collectively? Why are we here? How do we protect and enhance the long-term integrity of the enterprise on our watch? And critically, how do I, as the leader at my level of responsibility, use my problem-solving skills to ensure that the questions we are asking are the meaningful ones in the context of our values and history and, therefore, are likely to be successfully implemented in any action we agree upon?

Neither optimism nor pessimism is a strategy to be sure, but both need to be tempered by a healthy dose of reality and practicality embedded in institutional culture. Picking one over the other is a choice. I advocate for optimism, not as a policy but as an effective leadership characteristic that is more likely to get results consistent with institutional values and aspirations and thus to be enduring.