The leader who tells me "we've never had an issue, so we're fine" isn't optimistic.
They're asleep.
That's uninformed optimism. Hoping and praying the problem resolves itself while blind spots run the show in the background.
I sat across from a medical device CEO last year who opened our kickoff with exactly that line. No breaches, no complaints, no FDA findings — proof, in his mind, that the program was working. Six weeks later our gap analysis turned up a hardcoded credential in the firmware, an unmonitored cloud bucket holding diagnostic logs, and an SBOM that hadn't been regenerated in two years. Nothing had blown up yet. That was the only thing he had right.
Informed optimism is different.
It looks at reality. Acknowledges the gaps. Owns the risk. And still believes the team can win.
That belief is earned, not assumed.
One version keeps you comfortable until the bad news hits.
The other keeps you ready.
Hope is not a strategy. Awareness is.
Which one are you running on today?