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A leader who engages stakeholders when developing a vision will, in the end, articulate one that resonates strongly and impels people to act. One of my favorite Peanuts cartoons shows Lucy, once again, lecturing Charlie Brown on the meaning of life:. Passengers open up these canvas deck chairs so they can sit in the sun.
On the cruise ship of life, which bitcoin cli commands nortel is your deck chair facing? Unlike Charlie Brown, leaders today must have a vision. They must also ensure that their followers find meaning in this vision, the context in which they operate. Some visions compel people to act whereas others leave people cold or even alienate them from their leaders. This causes some leaders to give up on the visioning challenge, to let their actions rather than their words convey a sense of direction.
Other leaders are simply reticent bitcoin cli commands nortel it comes to establishing clear, directional targets for their bitcoin cli commands nortel. There may be many reasons for rejecting visioning as a useful exercise. Yet, as we emerge from another U. Compelling visions that move people to action, change their behaviors, focus on key priorities, and follow the pathway that the leader lays out, have three attributes that can be summarized under the broad headings of contentcontext and credibility.
Beyond that, they are developed as part of a collaborative process that engages key stakeholders. Compelling visions are not just slogans. But, since they are targeted to multiple stakeholders, they also lack the specificity that some of those stakeholders bitcoin cli commands nortel like to see.
This appeal generally rests on the belief of followers-to-be that the leader can deliver something that they want and need — the feeling that their leader serves their needs and that they can achieve through their leader. They might assume this servant-leader role for altruistic reasons, without care for her or his own needs, or on the other hand, to satisfy their own needs through satisfying the desires of their followers. Someone who has savings, a secure pension or is near retirement age may not care too much about getting paid more, but may put a high value on the social satisfaction that they get from doing their job — the quality of interaction that they have with clients, suppliers, co-workers, and so bitcoin cli commands nortel.
Someone who has a high need for achievement may be attracted to an audacious vision; someone who has a bitcoin cli commands nortel need for security may reject that same vision in favor of one that promises security and stability. Both types have to develop a content-rich vision to motivate bitcoin cli commands nortel to bitcoin cli commands nortel them. The problems arise when very different, sometimes totally contradictory, things turn on the people who need to be motivated to follow.
A CEO or executive team may be turned on by profit growth, especially when they have substantial stock options that vest when certain profitability targets are met. The union leader may see these profitability targets being achieved only through plant closures, loss of jobs and consequent reduction in union membership. Little surprise, then, that the union leader does not enthusiastically embrace the leadership vision.
For the vision of profitable growth to be embraced by both union leaders and management, each has to see a payoff somewhere in the content of that vision. It is not essential that everyone agrees with every aspect of a vision, only that they find something in that vision which resonates with them.
Even within management teams, there may be a bitcoin cli commands nortel of buy-in to certain corporate visions. A risk-averse CEO who has a substantial portion of his personal wealth tied up in in-the-money options may embrace a vision that emphasizes slow and steady domestic growth. On the other hand, the head of the international division may be focused on the higher-risk strategy of bitcoin cli commands nortel emerging markets.
The problem with many enterprise-level visions is that they have to be crafted to appeal to multiple stakeholders or, at a minimum, so as not to create conflict among any interests that have some countervailing power. This is a high hurdle for visionaries to overcome. One vision has to appeal to shareholders, managerial and non-managerial employees, partners, customers, governments, supply-chain participants, and community activists.
Desperate people, experiencing material or psychological threats to their immediate wellbeing, are primed to respond to a leader who promises the hope of delivering them from their current situations.
We see this most evidently in the socio-political context. Martin Luther King drew on a deep vein of anger and frustration in the civil rights community bitcoin cli commands nortel mobilized Afro-Americans to action. Barack Obama bitcoin cli commands nortel for an era of change for an American population frustrated and angry with the Bush administration.
Margaret Thatcher roused the British from their welfare-state torpor bitcoin cli commands nortel the s and got that country moving again, although there are still many people who would say it was in the wrong direction. But we also see the ability of a vision to mobilize in a corporate context. The contexts for these visions were situations in which employees felt constrained, restricted and dissatisfied with the way the company operated.
A business leader in a turnaround situation may be able to articulate a vision that compels people to act, whereas that same vision, articulated a year earlier or later, before the enterprise has run into trouble or after it has started a recovery, may well fall on deaf ears. One who seeks to build a long-lasting institution by making long-term investments may attract few people to that vision when the stock price is low; however, such a course of action may stimulate interest when the organization is performing well.
One whose vision focuses on innovation and creativity may stimulate followers to action when bitcoin cli commands nortel basics are working well, though he or she may fail to do so when the fundamentals of the business need fixing. There are times when there are several competing visions and a leader must consider the relative power of his or her vision to move people who may be torn between bitcoin cli commands nortel, attractive alternatives.
Time and circumstances may compel a shift of a particular vision. As the economic slowdown of early bitcoin cli commands nortel with the global banking meltdown of the second half of the year, most companies had to re-think their goals in light of what bitcoin cli commands nortel achievable over a specific time frame. Dell found that the shift to notebook computers required potential buyers to have a tactile experience.
This persuaded Dell to re-embrace the retail distribution channel that it had abandoned many years previously, when it switched to the Dell Direct business model. While flexibility is required to deal with dramatically changed circumstances, constant vision changing inevitably creates confusion and consternation, bitcoin cli commands nortel lack of faith that the leadership knows where they are heading. The President and CEO of TD Bank Financial Group, Ed Clark, continues to focus on creating a truly North American powerhouse in the face of an bitcoin cli commands nortel slowdown, a continued focus that has some critics calling for a time-out from the pursuit of this goal.
But Clark is determined and very conscious of the fact that any perceived weakening of resolve could derail the achievement of a worthwhile, long-term aspiration for the Bank.
This is not some innate stubbornness, but rather the resolve of a leader for whom the creation of an enduring institution is a higher-order imperative. There are those who just have dreams and those whose dreams will inspire others to follow them. The difference may have more to do with the credibility of the visionary rather than with the content of the vision. Such a leader has personal credibility which, when allied with the right content and context may provide powerful transformational leadership.
Such was the case with Lou Gerstner, a former, highly successful CEO of RJR Nabisco, who was hired to turn a moribund IBM around and transform it from a product-focused company in to one that had a blend of products bitcoin cli commands nortel services. But such personal credibility may not outweigh a vision that lacks substantive appeal and is credible in its own right.
Has this been done before? A vision may be appealing and the visionary may have some degree of personal credibility, but if the vision seems too fantastic, too implausible, it will not be seen as compelling, an absolute must for any successful leadership vision. Individuals that might have made it possible for Nortel to succeed had defected to competitors, where they saw the resources required to be a leader in the telecommunications field. Then sometimes, we see a newcomer who, armed with words but without a history of bitcoin cli commands nortel, and who may lack a degree of evidence-based credibility, can nevertheless still be persuasive.
This charisma may exist independently of their other leadership attributes or may substantially add to them. Both of the organizations they joined had strong cultures and, while neither of them had sterling performance records in the years immediately before their arrival, they were not organizations that recognized that they were in trouble and in need of a savior. The visions that Nardelli and McNerney tried to impose on their new organizations were rejected by employees and failed to deliver business results that were satisfactory to shareholders.
For any new leader, the challenge is to create a vision that reflects the wants, needs and aspirations of those who will be tasked with achieving it. Such visions are borne from the dissatisfaction that people have with the current situation and their perception that there could be something bitcoin cli commands nortel.
The leader may have an important role in generating this dissatisfaction and in postulating a better way, but he or she will do so with great sensitivity to the way that people view the past and present. The challenge is to envision rather than to have a vision, and this is best done by engaging people in the process of developing that vision and giving them a meaningful opportunity to shape the product of this engagement.
Commitment to it will develop only from this empowerment; mere involvement in a process will not result in commitment. The truly compelling vision has content, context and credibility; the process of bitcoin cli commands nortel it is collaborative. While challenging the status quo, leaders must respect those who have contributed to success in the past and seek their involvement and engagement in developing the way forward.
This takes time and some process skills. Leaders must approach the visioning process with an open mind, not an empty mind, one that is receptive bitcoin cli commands nortel the concerns and inputs of those who will have a stake in the emerging vision and on whom the achievement of that vision bitcoin cli commands nortel. If this takes some time, if people find it necessary to develop a new vision in a gradual, iterative way, then this must be viewed as an investment in developing commitment.
These four characteristics of a compelling vision — content, context, credibility and collaboration — are summarized in the figure, below. They suggest a set of screening questions that should be asked when any vision is being conceived, developed and articulated. Skip to main content. Menu Skip to content. Chintu, Namukale Chiu, Raymond B. Colbeck, Carol Colson, Thomas J. Doshi, Viren Dotlich, David L. Endo, Takahiro Enns, Douglas J. Nunes, Paul Farrell, Grace O.
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