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How To Illuminate A Vision Your Organization Will Believe In

What’s with “vision” these days? It seems most leaders would rather focus on action and execution. Have you noticed that the most popular articles and blog posts have numbers in them? 3 ways to…, 4 steps to…, 5 tips for…

In our research and conversations over the years, Ken Blanchard and I have heard from thousands of people organizations that their number one concern is lack of a shared vision. Yet less than 10% of the organizations we’ve visited are led by managers who have a clear sense of where they are trying to lead people.

Doug Conant, Chair of Avon and former CEO of Campbell Soup, recently told me, “People today are less interested in the vision and more interested in ‘how to.’ They are trying to get a sip of water from the fire hydrant of life, and it’s washing over them. They are trying to push everything away so they can do their work, and they’re looking for ‘how to’ answers like time management tricks.”

Overused And Diluted

Unfortunately, people don’t trust the idea of “vision” these days. It’s meaning has been co-opted by:

  • Vision statements that are no more than meaningless marketing messages.
  • Using vision as an excuse to lay people off.
  • Not connecting the vision to the day-to-day work.
  • Leaders who espouse vision but do not model it or who act in their own self-interest.

What’s Important Is Not Only What It Says, But Also How It’s Created And How It’s Lived.

What it says. Vision is a picture of a desirable future you intend to create and that illuminates your underlying purpose and values.

For a vision to be compelling and provide ongoing guidance, it must illuminate all three elements of a compelling vision: 1) purpose (or mission), 2) values, and 3) a clear picture of a desirable future.

Take the Apollo Moon Project for example. It is often mistakenly used as an example of a vision. When President Kennedy set the goal to put a man on the moon by 1969, the technology to accomplish it had not even been invented and an exciting decade of focused, Herculean efforts resulted in success. But what’s happened with NASA since? It has never recreated these spectacular accomplishments. Why? Because there was no clear purpose to guide decision-making going forward and answer the question “what’s next?”’

How it’s created. Typically a management team goes off and creates a vision they are very excited about and then reveals the vision to the rest of the organization. Later they are surprised when they run into huge issues during implementation and set the vision aside.

It rarely works to just announce what needs to be done and expect people to follow through. Taking the time to involve others in shaping the vision will save a lot of time down the road. Through involvement, people develop deeper understanding and commitment. Unless people really understand the “essence” of the vision, they may make decisions that pull in the wrong direction. And even when they do understand, if they don’t believe it’s important, they will not act strongly and consistently in ways to support it.

How it’s lived. This is one of the biggest ways leaders torpedo their own efforts. The moment you identify your vision, you must start behaving consistently with it. People watch what you do more carefully than they listen to what you say. People follow leaders by choice. Integrity is the bedrock of leadership, and if people don’t believe and trust you, the best you will get is compliance.

Jesse Lyn Stoner will be a guest on the TalentCulture #TChat Show on February 25th.

About the Author: Jesse Lyn Stoner is a consultant, former business executive, and co-author with Ken Blanchard of the bestseller Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision, which has been translated into 22 languages. Dr. Stoner is founder of Seapoint Center for Collaborative Leadership, which hosts her award-winning leadership blog.

photo credit: IMG_5063a via photopin (license)

Collaboration Mojo Meets Basic Instinct: #TChat Recap

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

By our very evolutionary nature, humans polarize. We’re hardwired to sense negativity, so we can counter it quickly and efficiently.

In fact, millions of years of this response to negative elements in the environment helped our ancestors survive. Not all of them, of course. And not for long, until more recent history. But staying alive and propagating the species was the goal.

Clearly, it wasn’t pretty. In the name of prehistoric progress, factions formed, mostly controlled by violent, fear-mongering leaders who greedily focused on their own survival, at the expense of weaker tribe members. And now after many generations, we’re here to tell about it.

Growing Into Our Collaborative Skin

Thank goodness for the frontal cortex. In more recent centuries, Enlightenment, the scientific revolution and humanitarian movements helped fundamentally shift the way we react to one another, and how we work with one another for the betterment of all.

That’s the value of every human life in a civilized society — the fact that we now can and do empathize with our global brothers and sisters. When we empathize, we can collaborate — and collaboration can elevate us all.

Collaboration: What is it and Why is it Here?

It’s not about 50-50 compromise. It’s not a winner-take-all confrontation. Nor is it merely a warm, fuzzy all-hands group hug. In its highest form, collaboration is an opportunity to create an entirely new “whole” that is larger and more effective than the sum of its parts. Ideally, a common goal is served, and everybody wins. As someone said at this week’s #TChat Twitter discussion, it’s like making a good paella.

Of course, as we see each day at work, in our communities and in the headlines, collaboration isn’t always the tool of choice, even among “civilized” humans. It hasn’t replaced polarizing negativity or self-serving violence. But we’ve “come a long way, baby,” as the 60’s commercials used to say. Violent fear-mongering is so last millennium anyway, right?

We’ve experienced first-hand how empathy, diversity of thought and respectful engagement motivate us to skip childlike together down yellow brick roads toward that magical land of Oz — from the highest levels of government, to corporations, to non-profits, to start-ups. Well at least that’s what we aspire to achieve — as it should be.

Learning Together, One Step at a Time

Of course, in reality, while we skip in sync with others on one foot, we still tend to shoot ourselves in the other. It’s not easy. But it’s human. And it’s progress.

Fortunately, for those of us in the TalentCulture community, as long as we have collaborative #TChat first aid within reach, we can rest assured that our corner of the work world is covered. Thanks to your participation, we are better, together.

And thanks to this week’s special #TChat events guest, Dr. Jesse Lyn Stoner, for helping us gain a much deeper understanding of collaboration’s roots, and how to apply it more effectively in the workplace. Jesse is a brilliant business consultant, executive coach and author, focused on helping companies improve their performance through collaborative strategies.

If you missed any of this week’s events – or if want to revisit insights anytime – just follow the links below…

#TChat Week-in-Review

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Listen to the #TChat Radio interview with Jesse Lyn Stoner

SUN 3/3  TalentCulture CEO, Meghan M. Biro framed the week’s discussion with her Forbes.com post: “Smart Leaders and the Power of Collaboration.”

MON 3/4  #TChat Weekly Preview “Smart Leaders Collaborate” laid out key questions for the community to consider.

TUE 3/5  #TChat Radio Show: Our hosts sat down with Jesse to define successful workplace collaboration. It was a helpful look into the human drivers that contribute to collaboration – or block its progress – and how leaders can be more effective by recognizing those underlying motivations.

WED 3/6  #TChat Twitter: Jesse returned to moderate our dynamic weekly Twitter forum – as a living model of mass virtual collaboration in action! Check out these highlights from the conversation…

#TChat Recap: “Smart Leaders Collaborate”

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Closing Notes & Highlights Slideshow

THANKS: One more round of applause, please, for Dr. Jesse Lyn Stoner! We appreciate you sharing your deep understanding of collaboration. Your insights sparked ideas that will help us work more effectively with others.

NOTE TO BLOGGERS: Did this week’s events inspire you to write about workplace collaboration? We’re happy to share your thoughts. Just post a link on Twitter (include #TChat or @TalentCulture), or insert a comment below, and we’ll pass it along.

WHAT’S AHEAD: Next week – SPRING BREAK at SXSW! No scheduled #TChat events March 12/13. But please SAVE THE DATES the following week, March 19/20, when HR/talent/learning industry expert Josh Bersin, Founder/Principal at Bersin by Deloitte joins us to discuss key trends, and their implications for organizational culture, development and leadership.

Until then, we’ll continue to tackle World of Work discussion each day. So join us on the #TChat Twitter stream, or on our new LinkedIn Discussion Group. And feel free to explore other areas of this redesigned blog/community website. TalentCulture is always open and the lights are always on.

We’ll see you on the stream!

Image Credit: Pixabay

Smart Leaders Collaborate: #TChat Preview

EDITOR’S NOTE: Want to read the RECAP of this week’s events? See Collaboration Mojo Meets Basic Instinct: #TChat Recap 

We’ve all seen what polarization does to a country — especially recently, in our own country, the United States of America. Extreme polarization hobbles our ability to improve processes and social ills, to progress as a global business leader, and to just plain get things done.

Collaboration Is Not a Zero-Sum Game

According to our talented guest this week, Jesse Lyn Stoner (@JesseLynStoner), collaboration is the remedy for leadership and culture polarization.

“Collaboration is not about giving up your individuality. In fact, successful collaboration depends on speaking clearly and honesty about what you stand for. Collaboration is about valuing and mobilizing diversity as a force toward the common good. It is about recognizing and respecting the humanity in each individual, even those who are stuck at a pole.”

This is tough for leaders and individual contributors to do in the heat of polarization, but it’s critical for the world of work to advance, as well as the world itself. This is the very heart of productive communities online and off.

#TChat Weekly Agenda: Focus on Collaboration

This week on TalentCulture’s #TChat Radio and #TChat Twitter, we’re going to discuss the benefits of community collaboration in every incarnation and entity we belong. Here are the questions we’ll cover:

Q1: First, let’s define both collaboration and polarization. What are they?

Q2: Why has polarization across all facets of business and life been on the rise?

Q3: Diversity of thought is a very important part of effective collaboration. Why is that?

Q4: What can business leaders do to encourage more collaboration than polarization?

Q5: Does technology enable more collaboration than polarization? Or both? Why or why not?

This Week’s Guest Expert

The TalentCulture Community is very excited to welcome our radio and Twitter chat guest this week, Jesse Lyn Stoner.

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Hear the #TChat Radio recording now

Jesse is a consultant, former business executive, and co-author with Ken Blanchard of the international bestseller Full Steam Ahead: Unleash the Power of Vision, which has been translated into 22 languages.

For over 25 years, Dr. Stoner has worked closely with hundreds of leaders using collaborative processes to engage their entire workforce to improve business impact. Her clients range from Fortune 500 companies to non-profits worldwide, including Honda, Starbucks, General Electric, Marriott, Edelman Public Relations, and SAP to name a few. Jesse writes an award winning leadership blog and is also published in the Harvard Business Review. You can connect with her on Twitter at and Facebook.

This Week’s Events

#Tune-in to TChat Radio Tuesday March 5 at 7:30pm ET / 4:30pm PT when Jesse will join myself, Meghan M. Biro (@MeghanMBiro) and Kevin W. Grossman (@KevinWGrossman) for a collaborative discussion about collaboration. How exciting is that? Very!

And as always, don’t forget to join us on the Twitter stream for an all-hands #TChat Twitter event, on Wednesday, March 6, from 7-8 pm ET. Jesse Lyn Stoner will again join us, this time as the chat moderator.

In the meantime, we’ll be talking about this topic nonstop on the #TChat Twitter stream and on our new LinkedIn Discussion Group.

So come on over and bring your best ideas about how to make collaboration work in today’s world of work!

***EDITORIAL NOTE: Did you notice a new look and feel to the TalentCulture site? Jump in and explore our new surroundings! This is just the beginning, so look for more exciting changes and innovations coming soon!***