Recognize the Wear Away Factor of Vision (The Sand Castle Effect)

Hello, readers. My name is Joe Pursch. I am a new member of the Business Coaching team here at BusinessCoach.com. I’d like to thank Chari Darneal for asking me to join her in blogging into the future, along with you. Blogging is a great way to informally trade inspiration and ideas with people, and get great feedback. As a business coach, I look forward to the chance to road test my questions and ideas with all of you. As someone who knows the value of friendship in business, I also look forward to the chance this blog will give me to build some great connections online too. I hope you’ll do the same!

 

I wanted to launch into the topic of “Vision in Business”, because to me vision is the “X Factor” for any organization. I have a background in sales and sales management in a number of privately and publicly held companies, and also as a consultant. About ten years of this has been in the media business. I’ve had inside contact with hundreds of companies, and I’ve watched them all take success steps or failure steps. The thing I’ve always noticed is this: if vision is alive in the company, mistakes are seldom fatal; they are overcome because of the spirit of the employees. On the other hand, vision-poor organizations can work at doing a lot things right, including hiring me as a consultant, and still never quite get there. The X factor is always vision. It’s a turbo charger.

 

Which brings me to the question of this first blog: What Are the Wear Away Factors of Vision? Another way to ask it would be "What are the things in business life that can eat away at a company’s vision over time, like waves collapsing a sand castle?”  I’d be interested to know what factors you are fighting as a business leader to keep your vision alive.

 

One that came to my mind recently emerged from the experience of a large media firm I’m familiar with. Stock performance wasn’t what was projected, so top managment moved a new group of regional managers in with one assignment: improve profit at any cost. That’s an understandable business goal, but listen to what happened next. One newly minted regional VP gathered his managers together and told them very harshly that things have changed: you really no longer matter, your people no longer matter, only the number matters. Get me my number every quarter, and you get to keep your job. Incredibly, he then told them that he owned this part of the organization now, (yup, that’s the word he used), and that the key to staying around the place was, you got it, the number. Then he walked out of the room. Guess what walked out with him? Vision, value, desire and motivation. Why? Because good people don’t work hard to just hit a number; they work hard for something that matters. A vision. All the studies confirm it. But somehow there’s still a senior manager born every minute  who wants to be the first in history to refute this for, you guessed it, the number. (By the way, last I heard, guess what the VP in my story isn’t hitting? His number.)

 

My point is that something that kills vision big time is a focus on profit without a purpose. Strong minded leaders can miss this. But most employees see it right away.

 

Have you discovered this to be true in your business experience? Care to share a story that backs up what I’m saying? Maybe as a leader you’ve had to come into an organization and rebuild morale after something like this happened. I’d love to hear your thoughts or story.

 

Send me a quick comment below. I look forward to getting you know you.

 

JP