Reproduce Your Vision in New Directions Part 2
Good morning, fellow leaders. I want to expand on the theme of my last blog entry on creating vision in new directions in your business. Let me clarify as I start by saying that what I’m talking about here is not coming up with new directions for your entire company; what I’m talking about is encouraging new vision within different sectors of your organization. Here’s why.
Vision casting is most often done for the organization as a whole and left at that. What happens then is that the naturally visionary people in your team will hook up to the company vision and make it their own in their work area. That’s well and good. But what about the less than natural visionaries that lead departments in your company? What can you do to help them personalize your company vision in real ways within their own sector of your business?
One of the things you can do is have a special series of conversations with these leaders about removing things from their work flow that are what Steve Farber, author of The Radical Leap, calls “energy suckers”. These are not problem people, but problem tasks, or as he puts it, “any work that hinders our cause”.
Here is a series of questions to get that discussion going:
“What are the most time-consuming, energy-sucking procedures we regularly perform at every level of your business sector, from your lowest responsibility hourly employee to your own manager’s level?” Try to list at least five procedures.
Now, here’s the kicker follow-up question:
“Is the energy we put into each procedure helping us or hindering us in regard to fulfilling our customers’ needs and dreams? How?”
The logical third question is:
“If something’s hindering us, what is the date we are going to set to modify that procedure into alignment or to eliminate it altogether?”
Next question:
“How much time and effort will be freed up in your department when we take this action?”
Final question:
“What new, vision aligned activity would you like to pursue with your new found time and energy?”
Try this vision creating process with your managers. You might find them thanking you for putting this discussion into play. They may feel freed up to honestly relate to you about how they’re managing their work and helping the company vision. Let me know how it goes!
As always, if you have any stories or questions to share, I’d love to hear them!
- Joe Pursch
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