ARTICULATING THE COMMON VISION
Excerpts from “WINNERS ARE NOT LONELY AT THE TOP”
THE TRUE JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE CEO: ARTICULATING THE COMMON VISION ESSAY 2
THE TRUE JOB DESCRIPTION OF THE CEO is a series of five white papers highlighting the “Five Star Process” that a CEO needs to focus on to drive a team to peak performance. These white papers correspond and mirror the main chapters of the book “Winners Are Not Lonely At The Top” by Carl Phillips.
The book describes and highlights the use of the “Five Star Process” by Garland Group who as a result of the process, delivered an EBITA improvement of 175%, a cash flow improvement of 254%, an employee satisfaction of 85%, a reduction in absenteeism of 16%, an improvement in safety of 54%, and an organic sales growth of 52%.
This is the second of five essays entitled “Articulating the Common Vision”. The Five Essays are listed below and each one represents one of the five stars in the Five Star process to which peak performing CEOs must adhere, and to which provide the framework for The True Job Description of the CEO.
Star 1 – Start Operating In The Real World
Star 2 – Articulating The Common Vision
Star 3 – Assembling Mutually Supportive Teams
Star 4 – Creating A Disciplined Culture
Star 5 – Seek and Seed Leaders
We hope you enjoy the essay and be sure to read all five essays, and if you are a Board Member or CEO looking to drive your team to peak performance please reach out to us on CEO@tpgleadership.com
ARTICULATING THE COMMON VISION
Star 2
“Leadership is probably the most studied and least understood of any management subject. Leadership is the capacity to create a compelling vision and translate it into action and sustain it.” – Warren Bennis
The CEO has to face reality in an organization and personally become the change that is required in organizational behaviour to meet the company’s goals. This requires that the CEO objectively evaluates the current state of preparedness of the company to meet the requirements of its chosen goals by facing reality and identifying the degree of change required to meet the company’s goals. The CEO then becomes the role model for this change. This is Phase 1 of the CEO’s True Job Description, “Start Operating In The Real World”. Having done this, the CEO now has to clearly articulate the common vision that drives these goals.
Why do we need a common vision statement?
There are many definitions of the words ‘vision’ and ‘mission’. One of the simplest that I have heard is that the vision helps you go to sleep at night and the mission is what you wake up to in the morning. Of course, we all know the vision tells you “why” you are working towards a goal and a mission tells you “what” and “who” will implement the goal. Whatever words are used to define the enthusiasm and commitment that is generated in a company to achieve its goals, it should be an attempt to create an over-whelming desire that unites and integrates a company to have a laser focus on the achievement of a goal. How does the CEO articulate this difficult to define desire?
From a business standpoint, most people seek to achieve respect as a member of a top class team that contributes to the betterment of society as a whole. Abraham Maslow defined human needs quite comprehensively in his model of five hierarchical needs. He set them in the form of a pyramid: every person in the organization has basic needs (food, drink), security needs (safety, shelter), social needs, self- esteem needs and self-actualization needs.
MASLOW HIERARCHY OF NEEDS
- Self-Actualization
- Self-Esteem Needs
- Social Needs
- Security Needs – Safety & Shelter
- Basic Needs – Food & Survival
Any person who works in an organization has needs at different levels of the pyramid at any one time because of personal requirements. All five needs are essential and need to be addressed. However, the needs for self-esteem and self-actualization are often core needs that are triggered by a compelling vision. This is what a CEO has to isolate when articulating the common vision.
How does the CEO do this?
“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung
How does a CEO help the people look inside their own hearts and ignite the excitement in each individual to be fully committed to the achievement of a vision?
People buy into a leader before they buy into a vision. The CEO has to therefore passionately own the vision and honestly implement it inspirationally as he/she drives it relentlessly to completion. The CEO has to engender trust by walking the talk so that the CEO’s behaviour is seen as transparent. The CEO leads the way as the role model for the organization to effectively execute the vision.
The CEO helps the employees craft a vision that connects to their personal visions and then helps them articulate it in simple easily understandable words that they can relate to in their individual roles.
The CEO works with the direct reports to identify what they feel is the ideal way to define the most exciting vision or future state of the company that will satisfy their need for personal self-actualization.
The CEO has already done the spade work by working with each direct report on the Questionnaire given in Phase 1 (Reality) and now further expands the picture by integrating the company needs with their personal needs to articulate the vision as each direct report sees it.
That is the vision is created from the frontline employees up. Each manager must listen to and record what their direct reports feel the vision of the business is and what it means to them.
This process is repeated by the direct reports to their direct reports and so on as the process is cascaded throughout the organization. This results in several vision statements that reflect different groups of people in the organization. Each department and each group in each department may have different visions. In the next stage the CEO will merge the visions into one.
These statements are then presented at a company off site meeting and consensus is sort through the development of several drafts of the vision statement by incorporating the core sentiments expressed in the different vision statements until all groups are satisfied that their personal needs have been addressed. In this process a companywide vision is created that ignites the hearts and souls of all departments and staff.
In some companies, I have suggested a company-wide competition to come up with the most simplistic and effective way to express the vision statement that reflects the common need. One will often be surprised by the powerful vision definitions that will surface from different departments of the organization.
VISION
Whatever vision statement emerges it should be seen as:
- Simple and easy to remember.
- Clearly applicable to every individual in the organization.
- Uplifting and exciting.
- Focused on a clear-cut purpose.
- Easy to test against every business action that is taken in the company.
- Every individual should be able to identify with it.
When assessing your company’s vision ask yourself these four simple questions. The answer must be yes to each one, or your vision is not effective.
- Does the vision force the management to make tough choices when the organization is in crisis?
- Does the vision inspire the team to align their efforts in a common direction?
- Do employees actually quote the vision when they explain to their friends and relatives what they do in the company?
- Does the achievement of the vision benefit society as a whole?
Some examples of vision statements that represent these aspects are:
- Nordstrom – “To give customers the most compelling shopping experience possible.”
- Ikea – “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”
- Tesla – “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”
- Jet Blue – “To inspire humanity – in the air and on the ground”
Vision statements align people under one exciting banner: a banner that they are proud to work under. “Customers will never love a company unless the employees love it first”- Simon Sinek. There have been many studies where alignment helps engage every person in the organization. When people are not engaged, there is greater absenteeism; there is 51 % higher employee turnover and lower productivity. On the other hand, when people are engaged, the company enjoys 30% higher productivity according to studies conducted in the United States.
In the USA, according to extensive studies conducted by several agencies, more than 50% of workers are not engaged in their work and more than 20% are actively disengaged. These figures are not surprising if you look at the scant attention that is paid by most CEOs to the importance of the vision. I know because I have personally worked with a wide variety of global companies. These companies, more often than not, are led by CEOs who have a passionate vision that they personally follow but have not ensured that the people in the organization are following close behind.
Every individual in the company should know the vision statement such that they can repeat it verbatim and proudly promote the company’s vision to all his/her friends, suppliers, customers and the community as a whole. Each employee should be able to test every critical action that they take for the company against the vision.
Many a time I have asked senior Executives of an organization to define the vision of the organization and because it is often a lengthy statement that sounds very comprehensive and good, they have had to refer to their manuals in order to answer the question. This type of vision statement serves no purpose for the organization.
A vision statement that everyone can relate to and be proud of is invaluable for an organization. It is often not given much importance and many companies treat it as window dressing for the public and the stock market. Think how powerful a statement Nike made with its slogan “JUST DO IT.”
That slogan is used constantly by company employees and even by people who do not belong to the company. A good vision statement is a compelling unifying force that drives every employee to make things happen against the company commitments. It provides alignment and impetus for every individual to function as an owner. The employee owns the vision because he/she contributed to the creation and articulation of the vision. This is the true definition of a common vision.
Lastly, the vision statement should be constantly promoted internally and externally by the CEO and the leaders of the organization. Repeated enunciation and reinforcement of the vision statement on a day-to-day basis keeps it alive. Most often the vision is used for training exercises and on annual company planning sessions only. Otherwise, the vision lies dormant in some file. A vision statement is not for show, it has to be embedded in the very DNA of every employee and constantly referred to on a day- to- day basis. For the company, the vision statement becomes the gold standard of measure for every action taken to satisfy customers.
Once a vision statement is embedded in an organization, the company then moves onto articulating the mission statement in a similar manner. With vision and mission statements in place, the company is now ready to assemble mutually supporting teams to implement the company goals. We will discuss how the CEO assembles a mutually supporting team in the organization next in third star of the Five Star Process, in the essay series “The CEO’s True Job Description”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CARL A. PHILLIPS
Chairman, The Phillips Group
Location: Toronto, Canada
Carl has been consulting to CEOs and Leaders for over forty years. He is an Industrial Psychologist, an Entrepreneur, and an Author who has written two books on leadership. Carl was the Head of Global Organization Effectiveness for Watson Wyatt Worldwide, which is now called Willis Towers Watson, one of the largest management consulting companies in the world with over 14,000 employees.
Carl Phillips is a Certified Management Consultant who has created several assessment instruments and tests on leadership which he has been applying effectively on a variety of global companies located in North America, Europe and Asia for over forty years. Carl’s book, “Winners Are Not Lonely At The Top”, is a live case study of the proven application of his “Five Stars” model for experiencing exponential, sustained growth in an organization.
Carl has co-authored a book called “Global Literacies”, published by Simon and Schuster, New York. The book is a summary of his interviews with seventy-five global CEOs located in twenty eight countries wherein the lessons learned by these CEOs on the challenges for running a successful global company are documented in detail.
Carl Phillips has been keynote speaker in several international conferences on leadership and he has written a number of articles on The True Job Description of the CEO, a unique insight into the critical force in an organization that is often neglected.
SHANE PHILLIPS is Carl’s son and is currently the CEO of The Phillips Group based in Dubai, UAE.
The Phillips Group has been helping companies align, focus and build their leadership teams since 1984. Driving organisations and individuals to peak performance has been our raison d’etre for two generations.
Please contact us for your CEO Assessment Guide at CEO@tpgleadership.com
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