One of the pioneers of the Total Quality movement, W. Edwards Deming, famously proclaimed, Drive out fear so that everyone may work more effectively for the company. But after attending a quality conference in the 1990s devoted to Deming's proposition, the authors felt somehow drained; talking about fear seemed to have sucked the life out of the entire audience. They began to wonder if it was a vicious circle; what if focusing on fear, even in an effort to drive it out, actually kept you in fear? What if the conversation were shifted to hope--not to negate or invalidate fear but to bring...