Integrating Vision into Everyday Actions
Businesses regularly allocate substantial slices of their annual budget to develop or refresh values and vision statements. It’s not uncommon for them to employ independent consultants to conduct ‘focus groups’ throughout the organisation to ‘hear’ (and be seen to ‘hear’) from their People – they must first uncover what ‘matters most.’
The outputs of such time consuming and expensive activities (often spanning many months) are then presented back to the business in the form of glossy imagery. The leadership commences the obligatory Road Show process – taking the ‘good news’ to the People. And, then what?
Without a doubt, leadership is well intentioned in commissioning such projects. Indeed, having a well-articulated vision and values framework provides a filter for strategic planning and decision-making. As such, it’s an asset to any business.
However, the real value to business is attained when vision and values frameworks are embedded throughout a business developing principle-centred decision-making at every level. And, that’s where the rubber hits the road.
More often than not, leadership, believing that the ‘job is done’ once the Road Shows have been rolled out, miscalculates significantly. The Road Show presentation is but the beginning.
The critical success factor for embedding vision and values in an organisation is the intentional and creative identification of all the business touch points. Then, integrating the vision and values framework far and wide, thereby embedding them down into the bowels of the business.
So, from casual water cooler conversations to recruitment processes, from formal performance management to business Linkedin messaging and Facebook posts; from formal and informal team and service line meetings – the more such activities are imbued in some way with the vision and values, the more they are understood by employees and seen to be far more than mere corporate speak.
Yet many businesses never succeed in taking their vision and values frameworks beyond the senior leadership. As a result, they never enjoy the return on their initial investment. Why so? Possibly because leadership assumes that ‘buy in’ at their level in the business equates to ‘buy in’ at the coal face – ‘we’ve told them!’ Such assumption sadly breeds disengagement and cynicism amongst employees.
If leaders want to see heightened engagement, innovation and productivity from their investment in culture building, then they need to do just that – ‘build!’ Perhaps they might view themselves as skilled, highly talented and experienced gardeners - always looking for the opportunity to introduce a new plant; always conscious of their role to nurture and most certainly to ‘prune’ as the plant requires. And, of course to root out the weeds as soon as they are detected encroaching on the beauty and success of the garden. But, that’s another story…