Hope Dramatically Affects Workplace Culture

BOSTON – January 10, 2007 – Harry Hutson and Barbara Perry, authors of the briskly-selling change management title Putting Hope to Work: Five Principles to Activate Your Organization’s Most Powerful Resource, today announced that they have launched a website devoted to the principles of the book and are preparing workshops, speaking engagements, and events to explain how hope is nurtured in winning organizations, plays a role in transforming culture, and helps companies generate bottom-line results.

“Hope is a positive force of action that engages people to work for a better future,” said Harry Hutson. “It’s present in individual lives, social institutions, and increasingly, as a differentiating factor in winning organizations.”

Hutson notes that hope is a concept gaining momentum and inspiring tremendous interest in our larger culture. Barack Obama’s current bestseller is titled The Audacity of Hope. In the medical community, The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness was introduced in 2004 to acclaim by Harvard Medical School professor Jerome Groopman. Oprah recently devoted an issue of “O” magazine to hope. Deval Patrick, the newly elected governor of Massachusetts, chose “the politics of hope” as the theme of his campaign.

According to Hutson and Perry, hope is important because it:
• Gives us energy
• Moves us to take action
• Makes us feel part of something purposeful

Traditional research into organizational health largely is modeled on how physicians view individual physical health, and focuses on ‘The three D’s’: disease, deficit, and dysfunction. But in working with many of their clients, Hutson and Perry found that focusing on health, rather than disease, provided a new and powerful lens through which to understand the condition and strength of an organization.

“We found that one of the most intriguing and powerful forces for change in an organization exists when leaders do things that help employees be hopeful,” explains Barbara Perry. “Our desire was to describe, in real life terms, what that force is, how it works, and how organizations can nurture it and intentionally apply it.”

Hutson and Perry’s book and forthcoming presentations describe the five distinct characteristics of hope and explore a number of related topics, including who hopeful leaders are; what hopeful leaders do; how leaders keep their own hope alive; how hope can be built on a grassroots level in local, adaptive ways that shift culture day to day; how hope can be observed and assessed; and how some companies in recent years have built cultures of hope.

For more information about the book, its authors, and principles that can help transform organizations and lives, visit www.puttinghopetowork.com.

About Harry Hutson:
Harry Hutson, Ph.D., is a business advisor and executive coach specializing in change management, communication, conflict resolution, and career development. He consults to a wide variety of corporations, nonprofits, and educational institutions. He is the Vice Chairman of the New England Center for Children, and for over 20 years he was a leader in human resource management at Cummins, Avery Dennison, and Global Knowledge.

About Barbara Perry:
Barbara Perry, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist, management consultant, and teacher. In her 25 years of consulting to Fortune 500 companies, her emphasis has been on facilitating development of customer-focused, innovative cultures. She pioneered the use of team-based ethnographic methods both internally (for managing change) and externally (to develop customer-relevant product and marketing strategies). She is a frequent speaker at trend, market research, innovation, and product development conferences and also runs a leadership workshop for women.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Dave Dix
512.257.1605
dave@melberg.com

This release was published on openPR.