In many businesses, every few years the same situation develops. Pressure builds, numbers get tight, organization falters and then we hear of a reset; new management, a new strategy, a new direction, a new plan.There is relief and almost immediately, a familiar line returns.“This time, things will be different”!

You do not need to understand the business in detail to notice what follows. For a while, things do feel better.Then the same stresses begin to return and a few cycles later, the business finds itself in a similar position.

The details change. There are different names and faces but they all continue to focus on the same things and hence the pattern never changes. It sounds like you can ‘trust’ things to be changed for the better. But it is usually closer to ‘hope’ without there being any basis for it.

And this is not just about businesses.The same dynamic shows up everywhere. In countries that assume the change in government will fix things. In careers where people expect recognition and reward without changing how they operate. In decisions where we hope for things “working out” rather than building conditions for them to work.

Because trust does not come from just wanting a different outcome. It comes from seeing something behave differently and consistently. If the pattern has not changed, expecting a different outcome cannot be trusted.

Hope is about what we want to happen. It has no logical basis although it is valuable as aspiration.

So maybe the better question is not, “Will this time be different?”But “What is actually different this time?” besides the names and faces?

Until that has a clear answer, we are not operating on trust. We are just hoping in vain, again!