This is the fifth in a series on Strategic Hope. The world is shifting in ways that affect every founder and leader building with purpose and ambition. This piece explores why hope-centred strategy matters more at this hinge moment than it ever has - and what this means for the business you're building.
In 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crash, Shane Lopez wrote a piece for Gallup called "Why Hope Matters Now." His argument was direct: when times are bad, hope keeps us in the game. Without it, we pull back. We stop interacting with the world. We stop showing up. "We just move through life in a zombie-like state," he wrote. "We all go through periods of sustained low hope, and they don't lead to anything good at all."
Lopez was writing about the fallout from a crash that shook the financial system. What we're living through now is broader, deeper, and more uncertain.
The World You're Building In
If you're running a business right now, you already know this.
Trade relationships that seemed settled are being upended overnight. Tariffs are being imposed and reversed and reimposed by the TRump administration, creating chaos for businesses trying to plan even a quarter ahead. Supply chains that worked last year may not work next year. Costs are shifting in ways that are difficult to predict and impossible to control. If you're exporting, importing, or sourcing internationally - and many businesses are, whether they realise it or not - the ground beneath your business is moving.
At the same time, the implications of climate and nature breakdown for health, food systems, national security, and the economy - set out with devastating clarity in the People's Emergency Briefing - demand a response on the scale of a national emergency. One that hasn't materialised.
The institutions that were supposed to provide stability and direction - governments, international bodies, the structures we grew up trusting - have lost the confidence of the people they were built to serve. The old assumptions about how growth works, where security comes from, and what the future looks like are dissolving. This is what a hinge moment feels like from the inside: the old order is ending and what comes next is being built - by the people willing to build it.
If you're a purpose-led founder or leader, this is the context you're operating in. Every day. And the question it raises is a practical one: how do you keep building with clarity and conviction when the world around you is this uncertain?
Why Hope-Centred Strategy Was Made for This
This is where hope-centred strategy comes into its own.
When things are stable and predictable, any reasonable business strategy will do. You set goals, you make plans, you follow them. But when the ground is shifting - when your supply chain is disrupted, when your market is changing, when the rules you built your business around are being rewritten - you need something more adaptive.
Hope-centred strategy starts with purpose. If your vision is grounded in something genuinely meaningful to you and consequential for the world beyond you, it holds steady even when everything around it is shifting. Purpose is your anchor. It tells you what you're building and why it matters - and that clarity is what keeps you making good decisions when the pressure to react, to panic, or to drift is intense.
Then it gives you the ability to find different ways forward. When one route closes - because of tariffs, because of a market shift, because of something nobody saw coming - you find another. You've already done this. Every founder who has survived the last few years has done this. Hope-centred strategy makes this intentional rather than instinctive.
And it builds your confidence through the accumulation of evidence of your success. Each decision that works. Each problem solved. Each quarter where the business moves forward despite the uncertainty. This accumulation of evidence is what gives you the belief that your efforts are leading somewhere real - and this belief is what keeps you building when the temptation is to pull back and wait.
Lopez drew a distinction between two kinds of leaders. Responders see problems and knock them out - they deal with what's in front of them, and they deal with it well. Initiators step back and create something new - they put the big idea on the table and move toward it. The founders and leaders who build well at a hinge moment are the ones who can do both: respond to what's happening right now, and keep building toward the future they want.
Why I Write A Global Hinge Moment
This is why I write A Global Hinge Moment - an independent research project tracking whether the new international order is being built toward the Sustainable Development Goals. It brings detailed strategic analysis to the question of what comes next - looking for the purpose-led leadership and the leaders who are operationalising hope at the highest levels. Because we all have a part to play in building the world we want, and understanding the bigger picture helps us build more intelligently where we are.
Why I Write We Are Mimosa
And this is why I write We Are Mimosa - focused on SDG 5 and the stories of women advancing the Sustainable Development Goals through purpose-led leadership. Women are systematically underestimated and diminished through the authority gap. Their stories of building with purpose and ambition are structurally undertold. We Are Mimosa exists to change that - profiling the women who are proving what's possible, one story at a time.
Both publications are part of building the pipeline of purpose-led leaders this hinge moment requires. They sit alongside The Purpose Company - looking outward at the world being built while the advisory practice works inward with the founders and leaders doing the building.
What Keeps You Building
Lopez said it plainly: with low hope, we stop interacting with the world. We pull back. We stop building.
If hope mattered during the financial crash, it matters immeasurably more at this hinge moment. Hope-centred strategy is how you keep building the future you want - with purpose, values, and ambition - when the world around you is so uncertain.
Further Resources
C. R. Snyder, The Psychology of Hope: You Can Get There from Here (1994)
Shane J. Lopez, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (2013)
Gallup, Global Leadership Report: What Followers Want (2025)
A Global Hinge Moment on Substack
We Are Mimosa on Substack
This is Part 5 of the Strategic Hope Series. Read Part 1: Strategic Hope: The Methodology at the Heart of The Purpose Company, or explore the other pieces in the series:
Strategic Hope and Business: What Hope Looks Like in Purpose-Led Founders
Strategic Hope and Leadership: Where Is the Hope-Centred Leadership This Moment Requires?
What Strategic Hope Is — and How It Works for Purpose-Led Founders
I work with purpose-led founders and leaders at every stage of growth. If this piece has sparked something - and you'd like to think about what it means for your business, I'd welcome a conversation.
