The Hope Engineer’s Playbook

How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways, and Energy for Better Futures

Master the ability to explore the incredible futures ahead of us and use hope as an energy for change and transformation.

A better future is possible, and as a leader, you can amplify your vision and create energy for change by starting with hope. In The Hope Engineer’s Playbook, Nikolas Badminton brings more than thirty years of experience working with leaders at over six hundred world-defining organizations and governments to show how hope transforms organizations and provides a renewable energy for change. He examines how practical hope has developed through history and influences how we operate today—by setting audacious goals and traveling together down agency-driven pathways guided by wisdom that turns aspiration into transformation.

In seven detailed, well-researched chapters, punctuated by feature sections showing you successful large-scale hope initiatives around the globe, Badminton gives you the playbook to translate your explorations and visions of better futures into impactful transformation. You’ll learn the Hopeful Futures Framework, with its stages of Explore, Empower, and Execute, which provides a cyclical method for adopting a hopeful futures mindset and translating it into action and energy in your organization and executive practice. In addition, you will learn tools you can use immediately: hope resolutions, workshop exercises, futures storytelling structures, and practical approaches for working with generative AI and large language models to sharpen inquiry and accelerate hopeful futures exploration.

The Hope Engineer’s Playbook is built for leaders who want to create bigger visions of what is possible and energies of change that supercharge strategic planning and execution by the frontline team. It offers a next-level layer of futures thinking—and the day-by-day practices that help teams sustain momentum, expand agency, and deliver real change.