Six
Steps to Restoring Your Vision
By Vistage speaker
Thomas D. Zweifel, Ph.D
You and your team
finally built a shared vision that gets you up in the morning raring to go.
You've aligned on it, found inspiration in it, and gone to work. But what if
the vision no longer drives you and circumstances run the show instead? How
do you restore a vision for your company when it seems far away and
irrelevant?
Although the job of
leaders is to "be today the future that you wish for in the world," as
Gandhi put it, managers all too often forget to stand in the future and
instead resign themselves to the status quo. How can you recover your
vision?
Step 1:
Realize how ever-present resignation is and how easy it is to fall victim to
it.
Resignation is really the result of the past limiting what you believe can
happen in the future. Resignation lurks everywhere: when we open the morning
paper; when we drive to work among countless other cars or in a subway
crammed with withdrawn passengers; when we are at work; when we go home and
watch TV. Even in teenagers' homes, the background conversation is often,
"These are your best years, you'd better enjoy them."
Resignation is
oblivious to itself: from the vantage point of resignation, there is no
resignation — it looks like realism. It's blindness to itself that helps
resignation persist.
Sometimes you have
to do more than recognize the past to push resignation aside. Andy Grove,
the famed leader of Intel, had to shed the past, or it would take him down.
One day in the 1980s, when Intel's position was slipping as Japanese
companies were conquering the memory market, Grove, then the company's
president, sat in his office with Gordon Moore, the co-founder and then
chairman and CEO. Grove turned to Moore and asked: "If we got kicked out and
the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do?"
Moore
answered, "He would get us out of memories."
After a moment of
reflection, Grove said, "Why shouldn't you and I walk out the door, come
back and do it ourselves?"
And so they did.
They jettisoned Intel's memory business. It was not easy, neither for Grove
nor for anyone else in the company: "As I started to discuss the possibility
of getting out of the memory chip business with some of my associates," he
wrote later, "I had a hard time getting the words out of my mouth. Intel
equaled memories in all of our minds. How could we give up our identity?"
It turned out to be
their best move ever. Intel had developed the microprocessor as an
alternative computer chip, which helped launch the personal-computer
revolution by providing the brains for IBM's path-breaking PC. Grove and his
associates had given up what Intel was for what it could be.
Step 2: If a
colleague has lost the vision, let him or her communicate fully, and listen
with compassion, without intervening or offering quick solutions.
Open the
lines of communication and simply listen to the person so they can
communicate fully where they are. One of our coaches, Nick Wolfson, finds
out as much as he can about the person and their situation. He looks at all
aspects of his client's life and, if needed, speaks to family and friends.
Step 3:
Determine the moment when you gave up. When exactly did you decide you
couldn't achieve it?
Figure out at what point you gave up. When did the vision become
"impossible," and what was the exact obstacle that got in the way? It could
be that you missed an interim milestone, or an important gatekeeper
dismissed the entire project, or some problem outside of work got in the
way. No matter what the interruption was, you want to identify the precise
moment and how it was handled.
Step 4:
Separate what
actually
happened from your
interpretation
of what happened. Put the past where it belongs: into the past.
Be sure you make a distinction between the facts and your
perception of the facts.
Eighteen years ago, I called a Finnish colleague and asked him how he was
doing. There was a long silence on the phone; I almost thought the line had
gone dead. I asked, "Are you there?" Finally he answered in a deep and dark
voice, "I think I shall kill myself."
I realized that he
took his goal so seriously that he would rather die than live with the shame
of missing it. His vision had gone out the window. I had to help him see
that the facts (he was behind in meeting his financial objectives) were not
connected to his interpretation (it's so bad he should die for not keeping
his word) at all.
I hear all the time,
"It's not really up to me anyway." It's important to clarify that this is an
attitude, not an objective reality. My colleague Nick tells clients, "You
think this is about your project. It's not. It's about you." Once you make
this distinction, whole new possibilities for action open up.
Step 5:
Revisit your original vision. Why did you commit to it in the first place?
What would be missing in your life, in your organization or in the world if
you stopped doing this job? If necessary, step back from the current project
or goal, wipe the slate clean and create your vision again from nothing. One
top executive I coached a few years ago did this by creating a set of
fundamental commitments; he saw that he could use his job — a job he had
come to see as routine — as a perfect vehicle for fulfilling his own vision,
including being a championship performer.
Step 6:
Recommit to your vision. Find new pathways, if necessary.
In many ways, the job of a coach is to have a player remember their
fundamental commitment when the player forgets. Eighteen years ago I coached
a Mexican fundraising team to meet a challenging monthly campaign goal; the
end of the month was approaching and they had not been in touch. So I called
the team leader and asked how it was going.
She said, "They have
revoked their goal for the month — they can't see how to meet it." I told
her it would make a real difference to morale worldwide if the Mexican team
led the way, and asked her if they could all recommit to their goal. I don't
know what she said to them, but it worked. They recommitted, delivered the
goal and boosted their confidence for all future campaign cycles.
Focus on the future.
You are in charge. Your tomorrow is what you make of it.
Thomas D.
Zweifel, Ph.D
is CEO of Swiss Consulting Group, a
global performance management company.
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