This is the first of five articles on breaking down silos. They were inspired by @Cameo Doran. I hope she approves.
Create a vision.
Align it to our corporate vision and objectives.
Sounds great, eh?
It reminds me of puppies. Who doesn’t want a cute puppy?
No one (who isn’t a sociopath).
But who wants to do all of the work it takes to raise a puppy into a great dog? Who even knows how to do that?
Have you watched someone with a bad behaving dog? Jumping on everyone and yapping incessantly? Constantly pulling at the leash. Shouting at the poor dog like it understands? You start out thinking what a cute puppy, you move to thinking what an annoying dog, and you end up hating the owner as some selfish git who probably loved the “idea” of having a puppy but it all ended there.
When we join a company, we see the potential. The reality is slowly revealed.
Most companies are like that yapping dog owner. The vision isn’t real. They all have visions posted on their website, but they’re just meaningless because they aren’t real.
A vision is a powerful thing if used correctly. But what does “correctly” mean? I propose it all boils down to one phrase.
“What’s in it for me?”
On it’s face it sounds shallow & selfish. But look deeper. It’s a question you and I ask ourselves each and every day with every task we have. I don’t want to cook dinner, but I need to eat. I don’t want to take the garbage out but I want a clean kitchen. Everything we do, everything, has meaning to us personally. If, as a leader, you’ve built a great team then their personal motivation is to serve their team members.
In the book Leaders Eat Last Simon Sinek illustrates a key aspect of team dynamics. When he tells the stories of the marines he spoke with, asking them why they would risk their lives for their fellow marines, and the answer is simple. “Because they would do it for me.”
Your own life, that’s a powerful motivator.
Let’s get back to vision.
Unless you’re in a cult, a leader proclaiming your loyalty just isn’t going to cut it. Great leaders know that to align their people they need the people to truly own the vision. It can’t be someone else’s vision, it has to be their vision. A great leader aligns those as the same thing.
What’s in it for me = Clarity
One of the 5 keys to high performing teams is Clarity. Getting your team members to own your larger vision is Clarity. Everyone is clear on the destination. The vision is shared.
But how?
Buck’s tips on Vision…..
Don’t force it. One of fate worst examples in history of forcing a vision was a company where a dumb executive made everyone fill out forms saying how they were going to align with the corporate vision and they were due complete in two weeks. Of course no one took that exercise seriously.
Build Ownership. Humans embrace what’s important to them personally. It’s just how we’re wired. Great leaders spend time every week subtly getting teams to internalize vision points. Bring it to their level. Always. An engineer who responds to the question, “What do you do?” by saying they write code is a leadership failure. They need to understand what their code empowers people to accomplish. They don’t write code, they empower people to _____________.
Reward leaders on Vision. Try this experiment. Walk into any organization and whip out one of the “vision” principles form the website and ask a single question. “How do you live this in your day to day tasks?” Be ready for blank stares and umm’s. It’s not their fault. The front line leaders simply haven’t prioritized it because as an executive you haven’t.
There are probably a dozen more tips I could give but they all boil down to the same thing. Conversations. Real conversations. If you want to create a shared vision you need to have conversations. Plural. Constantly.
One of the greatest leaders I had the pleasure of working under in my career, as an executive vice president, would pull front line workers aside for coffee or lunch just to talk shop. He did more to create vision in the ranks than a hundred workshops could have approached. He was a legend in the company and commanded more respect than anyone then or since.
The most important thing you can do to break down silos is to create a shared vision, through connections and conversations.
