The Practice of Leadership » Vision

A Powerful Source of Employee Inspiration

George Ambler — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 15:18:36 +0000

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An important part of a leaders job is to provide and environment that helps to inspire and motivate the people around them. Inspired, motivated and passionate employees lead to improved results and higher levels of innovation.

This is why the June 2011 issue of Harvard Business Review article “How Customers Can Rally Your Troops” caught my attention. The article describes how…

”a growing body of research shows that end users—customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company’s products and services—are surprisingly effective in motivating people to work harder, smarter, and more productively.”

It seems that when employees understand and experience the impact that the company products and services on customers it serves to inspire and motivate. It seems that the reason feedback from customers is so effective in motivating is because employees see customer feedback as more credible and instils a sense of meaning.

Customer Feedback is Seen as More Credible

Customer feedback is seen, by employees as more credible than feedback from company managers.

“Organizational psychologist David Hofmann and I have found that employees generally see end users as more credible than leaders as sources of inspiration. When leaders attempt to deliver inspiring messages, many employees react with skepticism, questioning whether leaders are just trying to get them to work harder.”

Customer Feedback Instils a Powerful Sense of Meaning

The most powerful source of motivation occurs when we are doing work that gives meaning and a sense of purpose. One powerful source of meaning comes from how we are contributing to improving the lives of others.

“In national surveys over the past three decades, the vast majority of Americans have identified meaningful work as the single most important feature that they seek in a job. And numerous researchers have found that people are concerned not only about themselves but also about doing work that benefits others and contributes to society.”

This insight also provides further support for the John Kay’s concept of obliquity and it’s importance when setting company vision and strategy.

How Companies Are Using Customer Feedback

The article provide the following interesting examples of how companies use customer feedback to motivate and and inspire their employees:

“Facebook flies in users from around the country to meet with engineers and share how the site has reconnected them to family and friends”
“At a Merrill Lynch branch, weekly team meetings begin with stories about how the team has made a difference in customers’ lives.”
“At Wells Fargo, for instance, managers show bankers videos of people describing how low-interest loans rescued them from severe debt—a vivid reminder to the bankers that they are striving to serve their customers, not their managers.”
“At Medtronic’s annual holiday party, for instance, patients are invited to share their stories about how the company’s medical technologies helped them. The stories humanize the work for the engineers and technicians behind the scenes.”

This insight also provides further support for the John Kay concept of obliquity and it’s importance when setting company vision and strategy.

What are you doing to leverage customer feedback to motivate and inspire employees?
What can you do to find and share inspiring customer satisfaction stories within your company?

Complex Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly

George Ambler — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:23:08 +0000

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I recently completed reading the book “Obliquity” by John Kay, which provides an important perspective on vision, goal setting, strategy and decision making. Obliquity is the idea the complex goals are often best achieved indirectly.

For example, one of the central ideas in the book is that individuals and companies succeed when they focus on striving towards a compelling purpose, as opposed to a focus primarily on financial success. In the book, John Kay points out that businesses are best run by enthusiasts, men and women who pursue excellence and that financial success follows form this pursuit. However, if financial goals are made the primary objective, then organisations begin to loose their way and significantly increase their chances of failure.

One example of this error, discussed provided in the book is that of Boeing, the aircraft company. Boeing went downhill after their primary strategic focus shifted from being passionate about building great planes, to a focus of delivering “shareholder value”. Bill Allen, the Boeing CEO from 1945 – 1968 described their purpose as to “eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics”. The downhill spiral began when the new Boeing CEO, Phil Condit explained the new focus “we are going into a value based environment where unit cost, return on investment, shareholder return as the measures by which you’ll be judged”.

Another example comes from the Collins and Porras book, Built to Last, which compared and contrasted the strategies and approaches of two companies in the same industry. In the book, Merck and Pfizer were two companies that formed part of their analysis.

Merck followed an oblique approach to their strategy, as emphasised by George Merck – “We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear”
John McKeen of Pfizer, in contrast to Merck, followed a more direct strategy, John stated “so far as humanly possible, we aim to get profit out of everything we do.”

However, it was Merck who achieved success and made the most money. So it seems that the most profitable companies in the world are not the most dedicated to profit. Instead they are dedicated to pursuing a compelling purpose. They are dedicated to pursuing excellence. It’s not all about the numbers and shareholder value, it’s about passionate employees, great products and satisfied customers. The most profitable companies are not necessarily the most profit orientated.

In the the article “Jack Welch Elaborates: Shareholder Value”, an interview with Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, discussing his ideas on shareholder value, he points out that…

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world… Shareholder value is an outcome—not a strategy… That’s not a strategy you can touch. That’s not a strategy that helps you know what to do when you come to work every day. It doesn’t energize or motivate anyone.” – Jack Welch, “Jack Welch Elaborates: Shareholder Value”

The reality is that ‘getting the numbers’ and ‘shareholder value’ as goals will never be enough to stir the souls of men. It’s the commitment to a cause we passionately care about that really matters, it’s this commitment that causes us to get out of bed in the morning and that inspire us go the extra mile.

Why all this Matters

So, why does all this matter? When is comes the practice of leadership it’s important that we adopt a vision strategy that is compelling enough to drive the outcomes of leadership, being direction, alignment and commitment (see post). Let’s examine the application of the concept of obliquity as outlined in this post to our practice of leadership. Consider the following leadership challenges that a direct approach creates.

Strategy: When we have generic goals and objectives, such as “improve shareholder value”, this does not provide clear direction for the organisation and assist to answer questions like:

How do we best allocate resources in support of this vision and strategy?
What trade-offs should we be making to support the vision and strategy?
What tactics would allow us to achieve our vision?

Execution: Without a strategy that results in clear and compelling direction, execution that results in alignment becomes difficult to achieve. Consider that alignment cannot be achieve if you are unable to address the following questions:

What should we all be doing differently or better when we come to work each day?
Who is accountable to achieve what outcomes?
How do we ensure that the plans, decisions and action across the enterprise all contribute towards the same goals?

Culture: Without a strategy that considers all stakeholders, it is almost impossible to gain the level emotional commitment from employees to support the execution of strategy and to drive meaningful change. Consider the following:

Does the vision inspire people to go the extra mile?
What behaviours are being encouraged by the vision and strategy?
What type of leadership style and behaviours are require to lead this strategy?

Focus on Getting a Few Meaningful Things Right

George Ambler — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 07:55:38 +0000

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Effective leadership focuses on doing a few things right. Trying to do too much is a recipe for failure.

How a leader spends time and money reveals what matters to them, it reveals their focus. . . or lack thereof. Effective focus requires that you understand the outcome you’re looking to achieve. So, a key leadership question then becomes, “can you describe the outcome you looking to achieve in clear, concise and simple language“? Without a clear understanding of your outcomes you will struggle to lead effectively.

“I can’t be involved in 50 or 75 things. That’s a Noah’s Ark way of investing – you end up with a zoo that way. I like to put meaningful amounts of money in a few things.” – Warren Buffett

What’s your focus and is it clear? As Warren Buffet rightfully points out, a leader who is chasing many things, end’s up with a zoo! A leaders most precious commodity is their time and attention. Leader’s should focus on putting meaningful amounts of time into a few key things. The things that matter.

I liked the approach taken by the top selling author of “Built to Last” and “Good to Great”, Jim Collins who maintains a disciplined focus to ensure he gets the most out of each day. In an interview with the New York Times, provided in the article “For This Guru, No Question Is Too Big”, Mr Collins provides the following insight into how he manages his time:

“….in a corner of the white board at the end of his long conference room, Mr. Collins keeps this short list:
Creative 53%
Teaching 28%
Other 19%
That, he explains, is a running tally of how he’s spending his time, and whether he’s sticking to a big goal he set for himself years ago: to spend 50 percent of his workdays on creative pursuits like research and writing books, 30 percent on teaching-related activities, and 20 percent on all the other things he has to do.
These aren’t ballpark guesstimates. Mr. Collins, who is 51, keeps a stopwatch with three separate timers in his pocket at all times, stopping and starting them as he switches activities. Then he regularly logs the times into a spreadsheet.
He has a good jump, too, on another overarching goal he’s set for himself: to produce a lasting and distinctive body of work.”

In addition to maintaining a focus in his purpose and on relentlessly managing his time, he also understands when to say “no” to the good to focus on his personal great.

“Mr. Collins also is quite practiced at saying “no.” Requests pour in every week for him to give speeches to corporations and trade associations. It could be a bustling sideline, given that he commands a top-tier fee of $65,000 to dispense his wisdom. But he will give only 18 speeches this year, and about a third of them will be pro bono for nonprofit groups.…. Book tours? No. Splurging with the millions he’s earned from his books? No, too….
This orientation — a willingness to say no and focus on what not to do as much as what to do — stems from a conversation that Mr. Collins had with one of his mentors, the late Peter F. Drucker, the pioneer in social and management theories.
“Do you want to build ideas first and foremost?” he recalls Mr. Drucker asking him, trying to capture his mentor’s Austrian accent. “Zen you must not build a big organization, because zen you will end up managing zat organization.”
Therefore, in Jim Collins’s world, small is beautiful.”

It’s clear that Mr Collins is focused on his purpose and manages his life accordingly. In an HBR blog post he goes on to say that…

“As a great teacher, Rochelle Myers, taught me, you can’t make your own life a work of art if you’re not working with a clean canvas,”

And elaborates further in an article on his website…

“Rochelle spoke to me repeatedly about the idea of ‘making your life a creative work of art.’ A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally important, what is not.”

So, how about you? How do you manage your time? Consider the following questions:

Do you have the clarity of purpose and the discipline of execution required to ‘make you life a work of art? Or are you just trying to keep up with the frantic pace of 21st century life?
What are your key focus areas? How much time should you be spending on each?
What should you stop doing? Discipline requires you discard that which does not fit!

Leaders are Future Orientated

George Ambler — Sun, 16 May 2010 13:59:50 +0000

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“Leaders are fascinated by the future. You are a leader if, and only if, you are restless for change, impatient for progress and deeply dissatisfied with the status quo… As a leader, you are never satisfied with the present, because in your head you can see a better future, and the friction between ‘what is’ and ‘what could be’ burns you, stirs you up, propels you forward. This is leadership.” – Marcus Buckingham, The One Thing You Need to Know

Leaders are future orientated and future looking and have a vision of a better future. Leaders have a strong sense of direction and a clear point of view. Unless the leader knows where he is going, people will be hesitant to follow. Leaders are always looking towards the future, plotting the course to new land, leaders are modern explorers, always seeking new lands and striving for distant shores. Kouzes and Posner in their their classic book, “The Leadership Challenge”, see leaders as pioneers…

“Leaders are pioneers. They are people who venture into unexplored territory. They guide us to new and often unfamiliar destinations. People who take the lead are the foot soldiers in the campaigns for change… The unique reason for having leaders – their differentiating function – is to move us forward. Leaders get us going someplace.”

Leaders deal with the future, they have a future-orientation which acts as a signpost, point the way, giving others the confidence to follow, to make sacrifices and to take bold steps forward.

How future orientated is your leadership?
Do you have a clear vision of the future?
Is it clear to others?

9 Tactics to Effectively Communicate Your Vision

George Ambler — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:42:03 +0000

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It’s the leader’s job to communicate the vision to their organisation and team. The first step is to ensure that the content and substance of you vision is relevant to the community. Once you have a great vision the next step is to ensure that the vision is communicated effectively. The way you go about communicating your vision is critical, communication can make or break your vision. The article “How to Inspire Through Vision — Even in Rocky Times” from CCL proposes the following tactics as a means for communicating your vision:

Stories. When you tell a good story, you give life to a vision. The telling of stories creates trust, captures hearts and minds, and serves as a reminder of the vision. Plus, people find it easier to repeat a story than talk about a vision statement.
The elevator speech. Every leader needs to be able to communicate the vision in a clear, brief way. What compelling vision can you describe in the amount of time you have during a typical elevator ride? Be prepared to reinforce the vision in line at the cafeteria, when you visit the customer service department, and even walking through the parking lot at the end of the day.
Multiple media. The more channels of communication you use, the better your chance of creating an organization that “gets” the vision. Use meetings, memos, lunches, podcasts, e-mail, an internal Web site, and whatever else you can think of (Twitter, anyone?) that will keep the message in circulation.
Talk to me. Individualize the vision by engaging others in one-on-one conversations. Personal connections give leaders opportunities to transmit information, receive feedback, build support and create energy around the vision.
Draw a crowd. Identify key players, communicators, stakeholders and supporters throughout the organization who will motivate others to reflect on and be engaged with the vision.
Go outside. Communicate to external customers, partners and vendors with advertising and public relations campaigns, catalogs, announcements and other statements.
Make memories. Create metaphors, figures of speech and slogans and find creative ways to use them. Write a theme song or a memorable motto.
Guide the expedition. Use visual aids and updates to keep everyone aware of the progress you are making toward your vision. Create a vision GPS, but don’t just give out maps. Travel alongside, stay out in front, offer directions and point out guideposts.
Back it up. If you’re talking it up, be sure to back it up with actions and behaviors. If people see one thing and hear another, your credibility is shot and your vision is dead.

This is a good checklist that can be used as input to a communication strategy for your vision.

Have you give enough time and attention to how you’re communicating your vision?
How effectively has your vision been communicated? Do people understand it? Do they talk about it?
What two of the above tactics can you start using this week to improve the communication of your vision?