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Vision

Doing the Right Things Right: Focus

by Ron Potter August 31, 2015

Image source: Hernán Piñera, Creative Commons

The sun is a powerful source of light as well as energy. Every hour of every day the sun showers the earth with millions, if not billions, of kilowatts of energy. We can, however, actually tame the sun’s power. With sunglasses and sunscreen, the sun’s power is diffused, and we can be out in it with little or no negative effects.
A laser, by contrast, is a weak source of light and energy. A laser takes a few watts of energy and focuses them into a stream of light. This light, however, can cut through steel or perform microsurgery on our eyes. A laser light is a powerful tool when it is correctly focused.
Leaders cease to be powerful tools when they are out of focus and their energy is dispersed rather than targeted. The following is a not-uncommon scenario:

You know the drill. It’s Monday morning. You arrive at work exhausted from a weekend spent entertaining the kids, paying bills, and running errands. You flick on your PC—and 70 new emails greet you. Your phone’s voice-mail light is already blinking, and before you can make it stop, another call comes in. With each ring, with each colleague who drops by your office uninvited, comes a new demand—for attention, for a reaction, for a decision, for your time. By noon, when you take 10 minutes to gulp down a sandwich at your desk, you already feel overworked, overcommitted—overwhelmed.

Rather than resembling a laser, too often we seem like the sun, just going up and down, splashing our energy anywhere and everywhere.

Focus management

David Allen, one of the world’s most influential thinkers on personal productivity, argues that the challenge is not managing our time, but managing our focus. He believes that with all that is being thrown at leaders, they lose their ability to respond. However, he is quick to add that most leaders create the speed of it all because we allow all that stuff to enter into our lives.
What happens to our energy? Allen says,

If you allow too much dross to accumulate in your “10 acres”—in other words, if you allow too many things that represent undecided, untracked, unmanaged agreements with yourself and with others to gather in your personal space—that will start to weigh on you. It will dull your effectiveness.

Not only will your effectiveness be dulled but so will your power. Instead of being like a steel-cutting laser, you will be like the sun, putting out energy with no focus. There needs to be focus because life is not just about running faster or putting out more energy.

The energy of stress

Another problem with unfocused energy is stress. When leaders are so wrapped up in all that is going on around them, they lose their ability to respond effectively. The stress comes from not performing at the level of expectation, which causes more stress. Leaders need to find ways to pull away or systematize the “stuff” so they can focus on leveraging their passion and realizing their goals.
Daniel Phillips, chairman and chief executive officer of SilverBack Technologies, says,

I’ve been innovating, building and growing start-ups for more than 15 years. I am energized by working with emerging technologies and have years of experience leading companies through the important growth phases from start-up to public offering or private placement, and beyond. Having led several ventures through these challenging phases,
I have learned that the most important leadership quality is “focus.”

With so much going on around leaders, focus may seem impossible or improbable to achieve. Employees, phones, pagers, e-mail, cell phones, problems, crises, home, family, boards of directors, and other people or things demand so much. We tend to spend our time managing the tyranny of the urgent rather than concentrating our efforts on the relevant and important things that make or break an organization.
So what should we do? Is it possible to better focus your focus?
The next few Monday blogs will focus on just this. Stay tuned as we zero in on what it means to focus.

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Leading a Team to a Great Cause

by Ron Potter August 10, 2015

Just having personal commitment to a great cause is not enough for a leader. The vision for “something beyond” must be successfully transferred to the entire group, whether it be a small staff, a department, an entire organization, a state, or a nation.

Image source: Erich Ferdinand, Creative Commons

No Dark Boxes Please

People do not like to be put in boxes, and just as important, people do not like to be in the dark, outside the door where company values and vision are shaped. People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

Many companies start with the right motivation. They talk about their values and they create high aspirations, but these same companies don’t really live by them.

The Australian Institute of Management and Hong Kong Management Association found that when leaders worked hard to develop consensus around shared values people were more positive. They also discovered that leaders who engage in dialogue around common values develop a stronger sense of personal effectiveness in their people than leaders who do not.

A Vacuum Will Suck the Air Out of You

Leaders who form corporate values, vision, and strategy in a vacuum or just in the executive suite lack the humility and commitment to move beyond themselves and include others who have solid ideas and opinions on what should define the company’s values. When leaders don’t talk about the company’s values and vision, people feel alienated and less energized.

John Kotter and James Heskett found that firms with a strong corporate culture and a foundation of shared values (values developed together with employees) significantly outperformed other firms in revenue, stock value, and profits. Who wouldn’t want those results?

When working to plant a vision and sense of a greater cause in a team, you must first ensure that values are understood and owned. This is accomplished initially by cataloging the personal values of individual team members. When the personal values of individuals are understood, team values begin to emerge.

Participation Leads to Loyalty

The following story illustrates the steps that one dynamic business leader took to win support for a great cause in his organization.

After agreeing with his executive team on a set of core values, the CEO of this large firm got so interested in employee input on team values that he asked a consulting team to go to six different locations and determine the values of the two hundred to three hundred employees at each site. In team settings, it is often easy to agree on the first five to seven values; however, discussions get very interesting as teams round out the full list of values that will govern their individual behavior and business practices. Using an audience response system, the consultants asked each table-grouping of employees to discuss and develop team values. Next, they worked on “room” values.

Upon completion of the six-city tour, the employee list of values was compared to the executive list. The two lists were surprisingly similar. After some final discussions and some tweaking of the list by the company’s leaders, a final list of values was issued.

Although the operative values came down from on high, every employee who had participated had a personal stake in and loyalty to the list. The company-wide discussion had galvanized the organization not just to a set of core values but to a gigantic something-greater goal pursued by the company’s CEO. This company desperately needed to reverse a quarter-century of declining market share for its products. The CEO used this exercise in determining values as well as a great amount of day-to-day, hands-on involvement with key personnel to successfully “sell” his organization on the dream of a huge reversal of the company’s fortunes. The entire company bought into the dream and now shared his passion for something greater.

As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, when everyone understands and shares a company’s values and vision, that team’s success follows.

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Blog Leadership

6 Steps to Establish a Vision

by Ron Potter July 27, 2015

Image source: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons

Producing the Vision

In previous posts, we’ve been looking at how vision and values intersect to produce trusting and successful teams.
Abraham Lincoln united his followers with the vision of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery. Lincoln successfully gathered people to his vision, based on a strong set of personal values, and he accomplished an incredible feat. How was Lincoln able to do this? How is any leader able to set vision into reality? Consider the following suggestions:

1. Establish a clear direction.

Have you ever taught someone to drive a car? Both of us have been the “driver’s ed” teachers in our respective families. We have seen that as teens learn to drive, their first instinct is to watch the road directly in front of the car. This results in constant course correction—the front wheels turn sharply as the car swerves from roadside shoulder to the center divider, back and forth. When you approach a curve, the swerving worsens! But when young motorists learn to look as far down the road as possible while they drive, the car’s path straightens out. They are then able to negotiate corners, obstacles, and other dangers much more smoothly. A distant reference point makes the path straighter.

2. Focus your attention.

We often focus on too many methods and alternatives. Building vision means focusing our attention on that vision. Focus is necessary so that lower priorities do not steal time from the central vision. If the vision is deeply planted in your heart and mind, you can proactively, rather than reactively, respond to outside forces and issues.

3. Articulate values.

Leaders need to clearly express their inner values. On what values is a vision based? Team members need to know—and leaders need to share—this basic insight. People knew that Abraham Lincoln was a man of integrity, honesty, hard work, and fairness. These basic values supported his vision of a unified country.

4. Enlist others to help with implementation.

In his book Leading Change, John Kotter writes:

No one individual, even a monarch-like CEO, is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all the key obstacles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new approaches deep in the organization’s culture. Weak committees are even worse. A strong guiding coalition is always needed—one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective. Building such a team is always an essential part of the early stages of any effort to restructure, reengineer, or retool a set of strategies [or, we may add, move a vision to reality].

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Leaders who want to create and implement a vision need to start a fire in the belly of the people they lead. They need to use all available forms of communication to get the word out. It is akin to brand management. A company that wants to launch a new brand will use every form of communication available to get people to try the new products. The same is true with implementing a vision. Leaders cannot over-communicate what they see in the future.

6. Empower followers.

In order to implement a vision, leaders need to encourage clear buy-in from the people. This requires moving beyond communication to collaboration. The goal is to develop a supportive environment and bring along other people with differing talents and abilities. It also means that when the followers truly understand the vision, the leader needs to step aside and let them do the work to “produce” the vision. The leader needs to give them the authority and responsibility to do the work necessary in order to bring his or her vision to fruition.

I witnessed a meeting recently in which the leader brought together a cross-functional group to brainstorm some marketing campaign ideas for the company. People from different departments assembled and were led through a planned exercise on corporate marketing focus for the following year. The best idea came from a person far removed from the marketing department. She quite innocently blurted out just the right direction and even suggested a great theme for the entire campaign.

If the leaders of this organization had simply called together the “marketing types,” they would have missed a tremendous idea. Or if the leader had done the work alone and not opened it up to input from others, he might not have secured the necessary buy-in from the staff to implement the project. Studies show that when people understand the values and are part of the vision and decision-making process, they can better handle conflicting demands of work and higher levels of stress.

The leadership would also have missed the energy these employees gained from simply being included in a “vision” meeting. After the session several employees came to the leadership and thanked them for the opportunity to help. Those leaders have obviously climbed above the fog and know what they are committed to.

Your values are your platform. They continually communicate who you are and how you work and lead. Your vision sets the agenda. Whether you are part of a small department, a large organization, or a global giant, your vision will set the direction and purpose of the enterprise. You will need a strong sense of commitment and trust to set your vision in motion and deliver it.

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Blog Leadership

How’s Your Vision?

by Ron Potter July 20, 2015

Image source: noir imp, Creative Commons

In a previous blog post, I discussed the importance of values. Developing and committing to values is only part of the equation. Leaders also need to form a vision. These two ideas—values and vision—are inseparable. Vision flows from our values, and the values we live by form the platform for our vision. A leader’s strength of commitment determines how well he or she will stick to either one.

Developing Vision

It is important for a leader to be committed to a vision. When professors Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus studied the lives of ninety leaders, they found that “attention through vision” was one of their key leadership strategies. Vision is the ability to look beyond today, beyond the obstacles, beyond the majority opinion and gaze across the horizon of time and imagine greater things ahead. It is the ability to see what is not yet reality.

Vision includes foresight as well as insight. It requires a future orientation. Vision is a mental picture of what could be. It also suggests uniqueness, an implication that something special is going to happen.

How do you develop a vision? Writers James Kouzes and Barry Posner suggest the following:

You feel a strong inner sense of dissatisfaction with the way things are in your community, congregation or company and have an equally strong belief that things don’t have to be this way. Envisioning the future begins with a vague desire to do something that would challenge yourself and others. As the desire grows in intensity, so does your determination. The strength of this internal energy forces you to clarify what it is that you really want to do. You begin to get a sense of what you want the organization to look like, feel like, and be like when you and others have completed the journey.

When you have vision, it affects your attitude. You are more optimistic. You envision possibilities rather than probabilities.

Vision requires belief. It requires that you refuse to give in to temptation, doubt, or fear. It is a belief that sustains you through the difficult times. Vision requires commitment and endurance. It takes a willingness to be stretched.

Leaders with vision assume anything is possible. Without vision, we can see a difficulty in every opportunity. As we develop vision, we see an opportunity in every difficulty.

Vision asks leaders to hang tough. There is no magic formula that says, “Everything I see in the future will be fine and will fall into place.” Vision differentiates us from others; it sets us apart. It helps leaders attract and retain employees who share a common vision.

Vision is a statement of destination. Leaders need to occupy their time with thinking about how things could be and project themselves into that future. Vision is thinking ahead.

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Blog Favored Trust Me

Favored Are the Steadfast

by Ron Potter July 13, 2015

Commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action.
But reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action.
—COACH JOHN MCKAY

Image Source: Ed Schipul, Creative Commons

William Wallace personified commitment.

The movie Braveheart tells the story of this hero-leader. He is the warrior-poet who became the liberator of Scotland in the early 1300s. As the film begins we see that Scotland has been under the iron fist of English monarchs for centuries. Wallace is the first to defy the English oppressors and emerges as the leader of an upstart rebellion. Eventually he and his followers stand up to their tyrants in a pivotal battle.

Wallace inspires his “army” as he shouts, “Sons of Scotland, you have come here to fight as free men, and free men you are!”
That battle is won. Later, though, Wallace is captured by the English and, after refusing to support the king, dies a terrible, torturous death. His last word? “FREEDOM!”

As a leader, Wallace understood the need to commit to personal core values, and he was able to inspire others to join him to the death for a noble, transcending vision: the cause of freedom.

This kind of response from others is what’s possible for leaders who understand the clarifying and galvanizing strength of commitment.

Commitment to Values

Knowing what you want is very important.

It’s surprising how many people, even those in leadership roles in large organizations, do not really know what they want. They are good people with good motives and good ideas. They work hard and get a lot done. But their values are inconsistent; their vision is not clear. They are wandering in fog.

To ultimately realize the power of commitment, you must be sure of where you are going and what attitudes and behavior will ensure that you arrive at your destination with your head held high.

Origins of Commitment

Commitment has its origins in clearly perceived values and vision.

Long ago, when I was growing up and forming my first understanding of life, I was mentored by a father who knew what kind of boy he wanted around the family house. Both men were committed to a simple core value: honesty.

Telling a lie was the worst thing one could do. Such an act brought great disappointment to my father and resulted in immediate sentencing and punishment. I quickly gained a deep appreciation for the wisdom of telling the truth. Looking back, I recognize that learning the value of honesty so young has served me well ever since. Being truthful has made me a better man and better leader. Such deep commitment to integrity began when my father focused my attention on honesty.

What my dad did also reveals how values and vision interrelate. My father had a vision for the kind of offspring he wanted to produce: a man of integrity. He knew that honesty would be a key foundation stone in building an individual with that type of character.

Commitment is not worth much if you have a distorted vision and rotten values. It is crucial, then, for leaders to develop the right core values. Right actions flow out of right values such as integrity, honesty, human dignity, service, excellence, growth, and evenhandedness. This set of values will determine much about the vision that leaders create and how they work with and through people—essentially how they lead and to what they are committed.

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