Page 140 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Beginning to Craft Your Vision and Direction 125

The caterpillar analogy can help us understand aspects of individual behav-
ior at work too. Under conditions where direction, common work values,
goals, and accountability are lacking, employees generally will do what they
must to get by. A type of “group think” characterized by a “we versus they”
and “we’ve always done it that way” mediocrity takes over. Like procession-
ary caterpillars, habit, embedded traditions, and practices become a way of
life. Energy is low, and creativity and cooperation are lacking.
Mission statements and vision statements are developed for both employ-
ees and customers. A mission statement, often called a purpose statement,
describes an organization’s core purpose, identity, and business principles. A
vision statement is a broad aspirational picture of the future. Both mission
statements and vision statements can provide focus and energy when used to
drive the organization forward. Organizational values are deeply intertwined
with vision and purpose. Usually few in number, often three or four, values
support the aspirations of an organization’s vision and its reason for being
described by its mission or purpose statement. Together, vision, mission or
purpose, and values make up an organization’s belief system.
We cannot emphasize strongly enough that if vision, purpose, and values
are simply the products of your thinking and writing rather than the products
of your actions, they inevitably will become framed hallway and conference
room artifacts of your failed attempts to provide leadership direction. To avoid
that outcome, these guideposts need to be developed by you and your team
with abundant input from others in your function or broader organization.
And then they must be modeled and acted upon by you, your team, other lead-
ers, and employees throughout the organization. Modeled in this way—day
after day, week after week, and month after month—your culture, guided by
important aspirations, purpose, and values, will begin to form and be regu-
larly reinforced.
Vision, purpose, and values become instilled in an organization when peo-
ple squint their eyes to look outside themselves, put aside individual interests,
and capture what they want their organization to achieve and be like. Having
a widely accepted organizational vision can make a real difference. When com-
mitted leadership with a strong belief system of the future makes itself felt,
great things can begin to happen. People quickly develop a clear understand-
ing of what is most important to the organization. Strong and consistent com-
mitment to common vision, purpose, and values has an industrial-strength
impact on individuals and the team or organization as a whole.