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Archive for April, 2010

What Is This Thing Called Vision?

30 Apr

 

 

There are three things you need to know to get to where you want to go.

  1. Where do you want to go?
  2. Where are you now?
  3. How will you get there?

 

All three aspects are equally important, but it is usually best to start with the future in mind.  This way you will be Pulled by Your Vision instead of being Pushed by Your Pain.

Organizations succeed when people throughout the organization share and work from a common vision. A shared strategic vision guides actions and decisions and provides a sense of how to proceed in times of change.  It focuses attention and galvanizes the team; it excites people and inspires them to contribute their best to collaborate for the success of the whole organization.  When people are aligned around a shared strategic vision, they are clear about where the organization is going, how it will contribute to its customers and its community and what it takes to succeed.  They understand how their work serves the big picture – the organizations’ success; and they feel they are at the center of things making a contribution.  A Vision is just as important for a department and/or team as it is for the company.

The term vision is an over-arching concept containing a variety of other concepts. Vision consists of two major components – a Guiding Philosophy consisting of the Purpose and Core Values which leads to a Tangible Image consisting of the Mission and Vivid Description of the future state of the Company within a projected environment. 

After you develop your vision, ask yourself and your team the following questions:

  • To what extent is it future oriented? — Is it likely to lead to a clearly better future for the organization?
  • To what extent is it appropriate for the organization — does it fit in with the organization’s history, culture, and values?
  • To what extent does it set standards of excellence and reflect high ideals?
  • To what extent does it clarify purpose and direction?
  • To what extent is it likely to inspire enthusiasm and encourage commitment?
  • To what extent does it reflect the uniqueness of the organization, its distinctive competence and what it stands for?
  • Is it ambitious enough?

 

Building Your Company’s Vision

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Posted in Innovation, Leadership, Strategy, Videos

 

Everything we do in life happens in a process!

29 Apr

Every time you, the team or the organization is trying to achieve a desired outcome you need a set of capabilities. These are either the skills that are required or the team dynamics that need to be in place to make it happen. A high performing organization will always need both of them.

Next is to apply these capabilities to a process. This can be either an implicit or explicit process. An implicit process is where you rely on the tribal knowledge of a few without clear metrics as to how you come to the desired outcome. An explicit process is where you have clear documentation, clear roles and responsibilities and clear metrics. This will more often than not be cross-functional and might even cross different business units.

The capabilities and process will allow you to obtain a certain result. If the result is aligned with the desired outcome you can do more of the same. However, when there is a gap between the result and the desired outcome, it often falls in to one of these categories:

  • Need to hire the skills
  • You have all the right skills, but the people are not working well together.
  • Your process looks fine on paper, but in reality people are not sticking to it.
  • There are too many process steps that slow down the execution and create frequent breakdowns.



A high performing team will work with a defined process methodology and build the right team dynamics through the right conversational dynamics.

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Posted in Business Process, Teamwork

 

Transformational Leadership Model

28 Apr

Gaining strategic momentum is critical to the long-term viability of any company. This requires the integration of key transformational elements to create an ongoing and sustainable improvement in traction resulting in breakthroughs in market position, profitability and growth.

When a company experiences lower than desired growth and profitability it is difficult to effect the changes necessary to significantly improve the performance of the company. Organizations are perfectly designed to produce the results they are producing. If a company wants different results it has to change key elements in the system. This Leadership Model presents the lens into the key design elements of an effective organization.

Any transformational change requires buiding Relationship and Trust and a compelling Context for Action.

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Posted in Leadership, Videos

 

Leading for Excellence

27 Apr

I went to the Wisdom at Work lunch last Friday to listen to Flint Sparks speak on the subject of using our work as an opportunity for developing psychological and spiritual maturity.  The perspectives offered and the depth of the discussion raised some key questions for me and for others.  I would like you to reflect on these questions and comment accordingly.

  •  What is in the way of excellence?
  •  What is in the way of our full expression of leadership?
  •  What is in the way of accessing our innate wisdom and compassion?

 

 In his book, “Leadership from the Inside Out” Kevin Cashman defines leadership as the “authentic self-expression that creates value.”  Using this definition he adds “anyone who is authentically self-expressing and creating value” is demonstrating leadership.

From my experience, I think great leaders create a future state that goes significantly beyond the normal drift of the organization. They make a real difference in value creation throughout the organization and the community. 

Looked at this way, other question arise. 

  • What does it mean to be authentic; what gets in the way of our authenticity?
  • What inhibits our full self-expression?
  • What gets in the way of creating extraordinary value?

 

I welcome all comments.

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Posted in Leadership

 

Conversational Dynamics Effects Value Creation

24 Apr

Two types of conversations occur in business today — reactive conversations and collaborative conversations. Reactive conversations, driven by resistance and fear, are wasteful in that they prevent real issues from being discussed.

Collaborative conversations help build trusting relationships, and deal effectively with real issues, thus accelerating results. Reactive conversations are inauthentic and closed while collaborative conversations are open and authentic.

When a team’s predominant mode of conversation is inauthentic and/or closed there is a high degree of resistance, waste, fear and resentment. These reactive, conversations produce interpersonal distrust and highly dysfunctional teamwork. This results in higher than average turnover and lower than average business results.

When a team’s predominant mode of conversation is open and/or authentic, the team tends to produce a high degree relationship and trust resulting in higher levels of innovation, creativity and strategic effectiveness. These conversations are collaborative, producing interpersonal clarity and a highly functional, high-performance team. This results in lower turnover and greater bottom line results.

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Posted in Conversational Dynamics, Videos

 

Factors Shaping a High-Performance Team

23 Apr

High-performance teams rarely occur naturally.  They must be created and managed.  Real success in any rapidly changing business environment requires learning how to create and lead more effective teams.  To build high-performance teams organizations need to apply an effective working theory to consciously and systemically build teamwork within their organization.  What is needed is a working theory that encompasses, systemically, all aspects of organizational life, from creating the strategic vision and winning customers, to implementing and executing the processes to support the strategic vision. 

 We believe such an actionable working theory exists.  It comes out of the work of Fernando Flores, Humberto Maturana, John Austin, John Searle and Martin Heidegger.  This theory is grounded biologically, linguistically and philosophically.  The fundamental theory, simply stated, says we act in language and our language creates the reality from which we act.

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Posted in Conversational Dynamics, Innovation, Teamwork, Videos

 
 
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