Hope at Work: 5 Principles to Breathe Life into Your Organization

by Barbara Perry, Harry Hutson, A G Lafley (Foreword)

Hope at 5 Principles to Breathe Life into Your Organization is a timely, evidence-based leadership book that establishes hope as a practical force in organizational life. Drawing on three decades of consulting and research, it speaks directly to leaders navigating rising demands for meaning, trust, and performance at work.

At its core, Hope at Work presents hope as a leadership practice. The book introduces five interdependent principles-Possibility, Agency, Worth, Openness, and Connection-that together form a framework for action. When these principles are present, organizations do not simply feel better; they perform better.
Through real-world stories, Perry and Hutson show how hope becomes operational when grounded in respect for human worth and collective action. Hope enables honest engagement with reality while keeping people moving forward-even under radical uncertainty and extraordinary pressure.

"In a world being rapidly shaped by AI and uncertainty, Hope at Work offers the human grounding leaders desperately need to build organizations where people can still see-and shape-a better future."
-JOHN WINSOR, Open Assembly and Harvard Business School

Barbara Perry, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist who has advised the tribes we call organizations for 50 years. Her work, rooted in the intersection of culture, organizational learning, and hope, has been applied to a wide variety of organizational challenges from innovation to large scale systemic transformation.

Harry Hutson, Ph.D., is a leadership development professional who works with organizations worldwide, as a coach, consultant, and educator. Earlier in his career, he held senior human resources and organizational development roles at Cummins, Avery Dennison, Global Knowledge, and Devon Energy.

206 pages, Paperback

Published April 20, 2026

About the author

Barbara Perry, PhD is a Professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. She has written extensively on social justice generally, and hate crime specifically. She has published several books spanning both areas, including:

Diversity, Crime and Justice in Canada
In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crime
She has also published in the area of Native American victimization and social control, including the books The Silent Victims: Native American Victims of Hate Crime, and Policing Race and Place: Under- and Over-enforcement in Indian Country. Both books were based on interviews with Native Americans (University of Arizona Press). She was the General Editor of a five-volume set on hate crime (Praeger), and editor of Volume 3: Victims of Hate Crime of that set. Her work has been published in a number of journals that represent diverse disciplines, including:

American Indian Quarterly
Journal of History and Politics
Journal of Social and Behavioral Sciences
Theoretical Criminology
Dr. Perry continues to work in the area of hate crime, and has begun to make contributions to the limited scholarship on hate crime in Canada, including work on anti-Muslim violence, hate crime against LGBTQ communities, the community impacts of hate crime, and right-wing extremism in Canada.