Sharing your organisation’s vision and goals
Successful leaders are a combination of continuous learners and visionaries intent on being better than before. It is the vision they establish and maintain that is the driving force, the catalyst, not just for themselves but also for all they lead. Paradoxically, such a vision must be complex enough to encompass not just the present but the future and it must maintain the flexibility to encompass any surprises that may appear. At the same time, it must be straight forward enough for all those associated within the enterprise – not just the managers – but the foot soldiers too, to understand its general application, and their opportunity to play a part: to be actively involved. This is a necessary prerequisite for becoming a dynamic learning organisation.
In developing an outstanding school in the 80’s and 90’s our vision was: To be a leading edge school. Such a vision fulfilled the criteria above of being complex enough to allow for continual improvement, yet simple enough for all in the organization to have a collective understanding of what was required.
However, that alone is insufficient. The vision must be a living one: it must provide the opportunity for both collective and individual action, at every level of the enterprise, so that it is practiced and given practical meaning. To quote Professor Dumbledore from Harry Potter, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” The right vision becomes first a catalyst to encourage choices, and second, a flexible mould within which choices are kept on track, on message, and the enterprise as a whole united, thus set to become a learning organisation.
Where a vision is nothing more than a heading on the enterprise’s website or notepaper and not lived, is at best, a dead weight and at worst, a distraction.
A vision needs a motivational pull which has the ability to inspire all people in the enterprise into choosing actions in support of that vision. On the one hand this requires an emotional appeal including at least a hint of excitement. On the leading edge, it equates to going into the unknown, or the discovering of new areas.
On the other hand, the vision must also have within it a logical judgmental measure against which the decision of why do this rather than that, can be decided. How does doing this rather than that place us on the leading edge, then becomes the organising question for all. The answer to that question is what the look and feel of the future will be, which brings in elements of courage, risk taking, and commitment. This too has the air of excitement.
Perhaps the crux is to have the vision embraced at every level of the enterprise as an inspirational aspect of the enterprise’s culture. All need to understand why and how the vision affects them personally, and that they too can have input. This elevates all members above individual, unthinking or unimportant minions. Instead they are enabled to put purpose and meaning into individual tasks and roles, to analyse what they do and to think laterally. When this happens a learning organisation develops with added energy and focus distilled from the personal practical knowledge that comes from what the person is actually doing regardless of the hierarchical level of that person in the enterprise.