I was in a pretty interesting meeting this past weekend. A leadership team invited a special, and highly successful, guest speaker to give them a few words of wisdom and direction on moving their organization forward. His key word was “Vision”. However, what’s interesting about the meeting is that this same speaker was invited by basically the same leadership team to the exact same meeting place just 5 years earlier. The speaker gave pretty much the same message this past weekend as he did 5 years ago. In fact the speaker reminded everyone of that fact and went further by saying if we don’t get a clear vision of what we want to be, who we want to serve and how we’re going to measure our progress, he’ll probably be back again in 5 years to give the same speech for yet the third time.
Here’s the point… All of these leaders want to move their organization forward. But why don’t they? If you’re a leader reading this I would assume you want to move your organization forward. But why are so many organizations, teams, managers and employees still in the same place they were a year ago or five years ago? Thousands of books have been written about leadership, management, etc. Conferences and workshops are as popular as ever. It kind of seems like we’d have it figured out by now. But statistics for employee engagement remain pretty much the same at 17% year after year. Most companies maintain the status quo and seem either satisfied or resigned to their fate. So what’s the deal? In it’s simplest form, the deal is we have to get off go and begin the implementation process. You can’t just think it, you have to do it. Don’t have a vision? Get one today and write it down. Already have a vision? Then what are you doing today to bring you closer to that vision? What are you spending time on that has nothing to do with the vision? How are you tracking your progress toward that vision? Answer these questions and you’ll at least get off go and begin the process of implementing your vision. Or… you can go 5 years, look back and be pretty much in the exact same place with the addition of a few extra pounds, a few more gray hairs and couple more wrinkles. If you’re going to get the gray hairs and wrinkles anyway, you might as well see some successes to make it worth the time.
Great post. After a keynote speech, people are pretty fired up. Somethimes they even put a little thought into what kinds of changes they can make. Rarely does it get to the point that they develop an actual plan of action. Even more rarely do they establish checkpoints to ensure that they are still on course. This comes down to accountability. Senior managers have to ensure that there is a plan for action and they have to periodically provide feedback as to whether the team is on track or not.