Hope Is Not a Management Strategy
There’s a particular kind of optimism that shows up in many MSPs. It sounds positive. Supportive, even. “They’ll come good.” “Give them another quarter.” “They just need more time.” Sometimes, that’s exactly right. People do need time to learn, settle in, build confidence, and find their feet. But sometimes, hopeful optimism is just avoidance wearing a nicer shirt. I know because I’ve done it myself. I’ve held on to people for far too long when the fit was clearly wrong. Sometimes it was a cultural mismatch. Sometimes the role wasn’t right for them. Sometimes the situation simply wasn’t working, no matter how much I wanted it to. And still, I kept hoping it would fix itself. It didn’t.
Nick Clift
7/23/20263 min read
There’s a particular kind of optimism that shows up in many MSPs.
It sounds positive. Supportive, even.
“They’ll come good.”
“Give them another quarter.”
“They just need more time.”
Sometimes, that’s exactly right. People do need time to learn, settle in, build confidence, and find their feet.
But sometimes, hopeful optimism is just avoidance wearing a nicer shirt.
I know because I’ve done it myself.
I’ve held on to people for far too long when the fit was clearly wrong. Sometimes it was a cultural mismatch. Sometimes the role wasn’t right for them. Sometimes the situation simply wasn’t working, no matter how much I wanted it to.
And still, I kept hoping it would fix itself.
It didn’t.
The Cost of Waiting
The difficulty with a poor fit is that it rarely affects only one person.
It affects the team around them.
People start compensating. Standards become unclear. Frustrations build quietly. The people who are doing well begin to wonder why the situation is being tolerated.
Eventually, everyone knows something isn’t working.
Everyone except, perhaps, the person who has the authority to do something about it.
That’s the uncomfortable part of leadership.
The honest question isn’t always:
“Can this person improve?”
A better question might be:
“How long have I allowed this not to work before taking responsibility for changing it?”
That question applies to more than people decisions.
It applies to decisions that never quite stick.
Meetings that go in circles.
Accountability that exists in your head, but nowhere else.
Processes that everyone agrees are broken, but nobody owns.
Projects that continue because stopping them would mean admitting they were the wrong project in the first place.
In each case, there comes a point where optimism stops being useful.
Not because optimism is bad.
Because optimism without action becomes a way of postponing the truth.
The Moment of Clarity
There’s a moment and it’s rarely comfortable when the leader has to say:
“This isn’t working, and I’m going to do something about it.”
That doesn’t mean becoming brutal.
It doesn’t mean burning everything down or making decisions without empathy.
It means being clear.
It means being honest about the situation, rather than continuing to explain it away.
It means having the conversation that has been avoided, making the decision that has been delayed, or changing the approach that has clearly stopped working.
Clarity can be kind.
In fact, unclear leadership is often less kind in the long run.
When expectations remain vague, people are left guessing. When underperformance is ignored, good people carry the extra weight. When a poor fit is allowed to continue indefinitely, nobody gets the chance to move into a better situation.
Honest First
Over the years, the coaches and mentors I’ve worked with have taught me something important.
They were empathetic, but they were honest first.
They didn’t spend too much time protecting my feelings when the facts were clear. They delivered the cold, hard truth without drama, and without turning it into a personal attack.
That made a difference.
Not because the truth was always comfortable.
Because it gave me something useful to work with.
There was no elaborate story to maintain. No need to keep pretending that things were fine. Just a clear view of what was happening and a decision about what needed to happen next.
That is one of the gifts of good coaching and good leadership.
Not having someone tell you what you want to hear.
Having someone help you see what you may be avoiding.
What the Business Needs
The business doesn’t need you to be everyone’s friend.
It needs you to be honest.
That doesn’t mean losing your humanity. It means remembering that leadership is not measured by how comfortable every conversation feels.
Sometimes the most respectful thing you can do is set a clearer expectation.
Sometimes it is to stop a meeting that is going nowhere.
Sometimes it is to acknowledge that a decision was wrong.
Sometimes it is to help someone move on from a role that was never the right fit.
None of those things are easy.
But leadership is not about waiting for difficult situations to become easy. It is about recognising when waiting is no longer helping anyone.
Hope has its place.
It can give people room to grow. It can help us stay patient during a difficult season. It can stop us from reacting too quickly.
But hope needs to be paired with evidence, clarity, and action.
Otherwise, it is just delay.
And hoping is not a management strategy.
So perhaps the useful question this week is a simple one:
What have you known wasn’t working, but kept hoping would fix itself?
You don’t have to change everything at once.
Just be honest about it.
Then take the next clear step.