10 The High-Performance Work System and Serving Stakeholders
4. The Vision Is Made to Work
Once steps 1, 2, and 3 are complete, the really hard work begins – the work of communicating the vision to the stakeholders and influencing all of them to move in a new direction. This is where the character attributes and learned skills of leaders become critically important.
The need is to align people to a common purpose and to ensure that the relevant people share a common understanding of the new direction. The word
relevant is important. Especially in a complex organization, it is unrealistic to expect that everyone will be able to align their interests with a transformational change. That should still be the goal – all people aligned – but realistically, it often isn’t possible, at least immediately. So the role model leader of
transformational change must expect to engage in ongoing teaching and learning.
In DuPont Canada, our future state target was aspirational: Everyone a Leader. This was a vague and difficult message for everyone to understand at the beginning of the transformation. To facilitate the communication, we created a small group of highly competent, highly motivated experts and communicators in the “technology” of the developmental leadership philosophy. Those people, most of them engineers, had regular jobs. They were process engineers, plant operators, maintenance experts, and so on. There were perhaps a dozen of them.
I referred to them as “teachers,” and their task was to learn at a deep level and then to communicate, inspire, and teach when the opportunity presented itself.
They were often asked by teams and groups to engage in facilitating learning where it was appropriate. These people were highly instrumental in making it implementable for Everyone (to be) a Leader of future state direction.
MISSION
“Mission” and “vision” are often used interchangeably in the literature on leadership. My experience has been that much can be gained from clearly distinguishing the two concepts. Both terms refer to a future state achieved as a result of significant change. A vision, however, is a vague (though actionable) picture of the initiating leader’s future state. It is something both different and desirable, something that can be achieved only through considerable effort, perhaps decades of it. It is a target that provides direction for the activities of an organization that is committed to positive change.
A mission, by contrast, though it does all of that, does so within a time frame of perhaps three to five years. Thus, it needs to be more specific so as to
provide direction to the organization within that time frame. The mission statement for EcoSynthetix is provided to illustrate the differences between its vision and its mission. The actual values for the measures of success and the actual year when the milestones would be expected to be achieved (three years from the date the mission was designed) are not given here.
We drive stakeholder value through rapid innovation and sustainable growth by leveraging our enterprise to deliver bio-based materials worldwide.
Milestones:
• Revenue generation: $X per year
• Value realization: Y new customers
• Strategic relationships established: Companies A and B
• Value creation: Z new products developed
The vision is the architect of change; the mission is the builder of change. A mission defines the organization’s purpose clearly and in a way that reflects its vision, which by definition is longer-term and less specific. A mission focuses on the organization’s expected specific outputs over three to five years. Below I summarize the differences and similarities between a vision and a mission.
Similarities
• Both are “owned” by the organization’s leader as well as by others who have been fully engaged in formulating them.
• Both are meant to influence, inspire, and energize the people in the organization so that they will understand and act on the leader’s new direction.
• Both describe what is possible. Mission statements, it must be pointed out, are sometimes too focused on what is, or they too closely reflect the current state.
This is not useful.
Differences
• A mission statement should describe some important stakeholder-specific goals or targets that are measurable and that will move the organization towards the future state described by the vision, which is inevitably vaguer.
• While a mission and a vision are both future looking, the vision is what
leadership wants the future to look like, whereas the mission is more of a link to strategic intent, one that describes in broad terms what the business is and what its direction needs to be towards that future.
To illustrate some of these points, the global mission statement for Greenpeace is reproduced here:
Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning organisation that acts to change attitudes and behaviour, to protect and conserve the environment and to promote peace by:
• Catalyzing an energy revolution to address the number one threat facing our planet: climate change.
• Defending our oceans by challenging wasteful and destructive fishing, and creating a global network of marine reserves.
• Protecting the world’s remaining ancient forests which are depended on by many animals, plants and people.
• Working for disarmament and peace by reducing dependence on finite resources and calling for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
• Creating a toxic free future with safer alternatives to hazardous chemicals in
today’s products and manufacturing.
• Campaigning for sustainable agriculture by encouraging socially and ecologically responsible farming practices.3
Greenpeace’s mission statement can serve as a model for others. As with other mission statements we have seen, there is an introductory paragraph followed by detailed goals and objectives. The former is brief; each word, though, is important and speaks to a specific behaviour or strategy. This is a very strong role model mission statement from which much can be learned about structure and form.
STRATEGY
There are many definitions of strategic intent, but the one this book will use is as follows: “strategic intent relates to the things we put in place to accomplish the future state change.”
This book also distinguishes between strategic thinking and strategic
planning. The difference is a large one. Planning is something that managers do and often entails extrapolating from the past in order to predict the near future. It is an extension of an annual budget, something that is calculated. Strategic
thinking, by contrast, is something that leaders do. Strategic intents describe steps towards the future state; they are more visionary than calculated; they are more about potential than action plans.
An example of strategic planning: “For the next three years we will grow the business at a rate of 1 per cent per year beyond the experience of the past three years, primarily by introducing our new product X broadly to our
customers in North America.”
An example of strategic thinking: “We will continue to grow our business by introducing a broad range of new products designed to reach our goal of being the largest company in our market.”
This example of strategic thinking provides the basis for further utilization of the level of thought tool. The next step is to take this to the design (see part two, chapter 4) level of thought. I see this as the opportunity to develop potential scenarios or strategic projects.
For example, if it is our strategic intent to “introduce a broad range of products” to accomplish a vision of the future, then there needs to be further strategic thinking to develop strategic projects that are the best routes to the future we desire. We might think about three to five different products that are feasible offerings for the market. These are real, not concepts. They are real because we will test them with engineering, R&D, marketing, and manufacturing competencies to ensure they are real. But at this point, we are not taking action or making choices. Rather, we are thinking about the possibilities and becoming
comfortable with the range of potential directions.
To summarize, then, formulating direction for change can be viewed in this way:
Vision → Mission → Strategy
The vision is the anchor. It describes what the organization will achieve in the distant future. It is vague in its wording but clear in its aims, and it is
achievable. The mission creates unity and develops a commitment to achieving measurable results. It is focused on a shorter term – three to five years, but sometimes shorter than that. The strategy is a set of statements that are more specific. They are guides to measurable actions.
Of these three, the strategy is the most flexible. It is a refinement of the organization’s vision and mission, and it focuses on actionable projects. It is a tool that leaders can use when selecting the means and ways to create the changes encompassed by the vision and the mission. The leader has both the opportunity and the flexibility – perhaps even the responsibility – to consider changes in strategy. Indeed, a role model leader should consider changes in strategic intent at least every year or two or even more often. When doing so, she should ask these questions: How have things changed in the past few months in our environment? What have we learned that might suggest a new strategy?
How have our competitors changed, and does this force us to change our strategy? What changes does our organization need to make to meet the new challenges of a changing environment and challenging competitors?
In many ways, the skills, character attributes, and purposeful behaviours of the role model leader are tested more when strategy is being defined than at any other time. There is a calmness, a thoughtfulness to developing a vision and a mission; strategy, by contrast, is usually formulated when times are more urgent.
Strategizing is a high-energy process. Leaders who succeed at defining the right strategies truly are admirable role model leaders.
Strategy encompasses all the thinking that is required in order to utilize human, physical, financial, and technological resources with the intent of
achieving the organization’s vision. It can also be thought of as a means to seek a competitive advantage. The advantage has been realized when the organization has placed itself in a better position than its rivals to meet the needs of
stakeholders.
Competitive advantage is important to both profit-oriented organizations and not-for-profit ones. In a profit-oriented business, competitive advantage flows from a strategy that has placed the organization in a better position than its rivals to create economic value for customers. Those customers then reward the
organization’s efforts with sales revenues that can translate into sustainable growth. In a not-for-profit organization, competitive advantage flows out of a
strategy that places it in a better position than other service providers to create real and perceived value for society. Society then rewards these efforts with donations of money, time, and energy, which in turn can translate into
sustainable growth for the organization.
Implementing Change
The levels of thought that define the stage we call implementing change and achieving positive results are as follows:
Action: Examine what needs to be done to accomplish change and get results.
Audit: Examine what the organization is doing, then identify what, if any, variation exists between the target and the strategy for achieving it.
Evaluate: Examine performance relative to expectations.
This step of implementing change deals with the functioning capability that the organization and its leaders need to apply in order to make the required change happen. A multitude of studies have found that many businesses fail because of poor execution. It doesn’t matter how good the strategy is; excellent execution is always more important if you hope to get the results that you and the other stakeholders expect.
Let’s be clear about what we mean by getting positive results. Those results are, in effect, the measures of the transformational change promised by the future state direction. They are signifiers of progress from a similarly measured
current state. For example, if our goal is a workplace safety frequency of 2.0 injuries for every 200,000 hours worked by all the people in the organization, and if we experience an organizational injury frequency of 1.0 injury per 200,000 hours worked last year, then we have succeeded at making positive change. We haven’t yet achieved our aspiration, which is zero injuries, but this is a positive result nevertheless.
An action is a clearly defined and planned event that requires an output of energy by the elements and resources that the organization has dedicated to it. At this stage in the change process, the leader’s role is to influence the people in the organization to think about, plan, manage, and lead the work. Role model leaders contribute to this by leading the design of the work processes, by
ensuring that their people understand the importance and urgency of the work, by ensuring that the people thus engaged are dedicated and (one hopes) inspired to do the work, and by ensuring that the people doing the work are functionally skilled and have the right mix of character attributes and purposeful behaviours to be effective.
All of this requires the leaders’ ongoing involvement. This is not leading by mandate.
The very best role model leaders are not “doing” the work; rather, they are being seen, heard, and felt by their people as being in the work. At the
getting-results stage of the change process, the very best role model leaders have a visible and well-understood approach to leading.
People think of execution as something leaders delegate while they focus on the
“bigger issues.” Their idea is completely wrong. Execution is a discipline and a system.
Larry Bossidy4
Bossidy is saying that implementation is a leader’s most important job. If the leader’s role is to influence people to make positive change, he is definitely right. Many leaders interpret their role as “asking,” “persuading,” or
“demanding” that followers take action based on the direction communicated to them. But it would be an error to think that a leader simply directs her followers to take action and get results while she merely watches.
I agree with Bossidy, an engineer and business person, and with many others:
a leader must be passionately involved in taking action to get results. My experience has been that when a leader is actively and appropriately involved with the people who are implementing the direction, stronger and more effective results are achieved. People want their leaders to be involved; they are inspired by their leaders’ participation. A leader’s credibility is enhanced when she involves herself in implementation. To be clear, the leader’s involvement entails active mental, emotional, spiritual, and – yes – physical work.
Implementation is the role and shared responsibility of all the people involved in a project – followers, managers, and leaders.
If you are not consumed with the need to participate in and complete the change process by implementing direction, you are not a role model leader. If you inspire people with a vision of the future and set a direction for important change and then walk away from implementation, telling yourself it’s someone else’s job, you are not a role model leader. Indeed, you are being foolishly counterproductive and almost guaranteeing markedly suboptimal outcomes.
Think about all the activists who yell and scream about their cause in many forums, even those who speak knowledgeably – those so-called activists who criticize and ask for change and then do nothing. Are role model leaders those people? Or are they the ones who seek to work with others on actionable projects in the private and public sectors? One could argue that the latter are doing more to contribute to a better world.
Even visionary leaders lose credibility if they step aside when it is time to take action, leaving implementation to others. Role model leaders stay the
course from idea to results. They are willing and able to participate in the entire change process.
The word action, to me, means productive work that leads to positive change – to the adding of value as judged by the stakeholders. Whether work has been
productive is determined by audit and evaluation steps; action includes a process of auditing and evaluating actions that have been taken. To state this more fully, an action, such as “selling more widgets,” is subjected to an audit, such as “how many” and “what size.” The results are then subjected to an evaluation: Did these outcomes of the action benefit the stakeholders of the enterprise? What level of productivity, quality, or service was reached?
Managing is largely about controlling the work, “stabilizing” it, if you will.
In this vein, managing during times of change involves looking out for whether the change is working and whether the change could be carried out more
efficiently. If additional change is needed, or if the change is proceeding according to plan but those following have the capacity to accomplish even more positive change, leading addresses that circumstance.
Leadership is extremely important in the overall iterative processes of action, audit, and evaluation. Each of these requires decisions to be made:
decisions relating specifically to the need for further changes, as well as
decisions regarding followers’ potential to do more. The very best role model leaders participate and collaborate with others – both those managing and those following – during implementation. They are also flexible, and they have the skill and judgment required to decide on the best ways to maximize long-term results.
In the simplest of terms, leaders, managers, and followers work closely together from strategy through action to auditing and evaluation.
The principal leadership roles are as follows: making strategic decisions relative to selecting, retaining, and developing people; making decisions about changes in strategy; helping managers assess results; and engaging with
followers to understand their needs so that positive results are obtained.
The principal management roles are as follows: establishing efficient
control; planning action steps; getting results through people; controlling inputs and outputs to projects; and auditing and evaluating results.
The Interface between Strategy and Implementation
The interface between formulating direction and implementing action is encountered at the moment when strategic thinking shifts towards tactical
thinking. This is a key point in the change process, because it is where strategy faces its first real test. Crossing the boundary from strategy to tactics does not, however, mean that strategizing is finished and that tactics are all that are left.
Strategy formulation can be deliberate or emergent.5 Deliberate strategy flows from analytical thinking; it entails assessing the market, competitors’
strengths and weaknesses, market growth, and customer needs. Once this assessment is completed, decisions about implementation are made. This, briefly, is deliberate strategy making, which is the traditional approach to
strategic planning.
Emergent strategy is very different. It flows from day-to-day priorities established by leaders, managers, and followers, all of whom will have a hand
Emergent strategy is very different. It flows from day-to-day priorities established by leaders, managers, and followers, all of whom will have a hand