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Chapter 11

ONE VOICE, PATHFINDING, SHARED VISION, VALUES AND STRATEGY

Think about this brief exurb from Alice in wonderland by Lewis Carroll. One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.

“Which road do I take?” she asked.

His response was a question: “Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Alice answered.

“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

Remember, acquiring the 8th Habit is an inside-out, sequential process. Like any habit, it is a combination of ATTITUDE, SKILL and KNOWLEDGE. We’ve discussed the ATTITUDE of trim-tabbing initiative. We’ve discussed the SKILLS of building trust and seeking Third Alternatives. The 4 Roles of Leadership represent Third Alternative leadership and influence. They give you KNOWLEDGE of the principles of transformational leadership.

Again, this influence begins with modeling trustworthiness so that people will have confidence in you. But as you know, they need more than your trustworthiness. Good intentions do not compensate for bad judgment. People need a model to see how they can work and lead in a different way different from what they are used to, different from the culture of the organization they work in, different from the controlling, transactional traditions of the Industrial Age. Your most important modeling will be to show others how a person who has found his or her voice acts inside the other three primary roles of a leader pathfinding, aligning and empowering.

To help you model these three roles, I will begin the chapters covering the three remaining roles of leadership by 1) identifying the myth and the reality that surrounds each role, and 2) describing three contrasting alternatives for approaching each role. The key in any challenge is to always seek the higher Third Alternative.

In this chapter we take on the leadership challenge of uniting people who are diverse in their strengths and ways of seeing the world into one voice, one great purpose. It’s the role of pathfinding shared vision, values and strategic priorities. Let’s begin by looking first at the pathfinding myth, reality and alternatives.

The first alternative to the pathfinding role of leadership would be to announce vision, values and strategy to your team or organization without any real involvement on their part.

The second alternative would be to get excessive involvement and get bogged down in paralysis by analysis and committee-itis; have extensive off-sites and endless discussions, almost working on the assumption that you don’t need to execute strategy or empower.

The third alternative would be to not only reasonably involve people in the process of developing the vision, mission and strategy but also recognize that if you build a strong enough culture of trust, and are personally trustworthy yourself, the power of identification is equal to the power of involvement.

Allow me to illustrate this third alternative.

I’ve long been amazed at the consistent, absolutely extraordinary levels of service I’ve received while staying at Ritz-Carlton hotels. As I’ve become better acquainted over the years with Horst Schulze, the hotel chain’s former longtime president and chief operating officer, I’ve better understood how their remarkable culture was created. Under Schulze’s direction, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company won an unprecedented two Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards in the service category.

I once interviewed Horst for an internationally syndicated column I was writing. I asked him, “How would you define leadership?” Here was his response:

Leadership is creating an environment in which people want to be part of the organization and not just work for the organization. Leadership creates an environment that makes people want to, rather than have to, do. It is a business imperative to create that environment. I must give purpose, not just work and function. As a businessperson, I am obligated to create an environment where people feel part of something, feel fulfilled, and have purpose. It is purpose it is value in their lives that leads people to truly give of their minds. Then you are getting the maximum from them, and are giving the maximum to the person. Anything less is irresponsible to the organization and demands more handling by the individual.

When you see people only as fulfilling a function, you’re treating them like a thing, like the chair you’re sitting on. I don’t think we as humans can assume the right to do that. None of us want to be just something standing in a corner. We found the greatest satisfaction for an employee is to feel part of something and to feel trusted to make decisions and to contribute.

Everyone is a knowledge worker in their specific area, and undoubtedly the dishwasher has more knowledge about their situation than I have. So that dishwasher can contribute to the improved environment, work conditions, productivity, lack of dish breaking, etc. They can contribute their knowledge in their area tremendously.

I had a young man from Nairobi who joined me as a dishwasher in the hotel about sixteen years ago. He couldn’t speak proper English, but he was a very hardworking young man. After a while, they offered him a job in room service, then as a room service leader, then a lobby attendant, then a bartender, then he became an assistant lobby manager; he’s now the food and beverage director. He’s the number-two man in the hotel, and started as a dishwasher.

When I was sixteen years old, my mother took me to the hotel with my little suitcase to begin my apprenticeship. There were all these important guests and I thought they were all so above me. But I got close to a remarkable seventy-year-old headwaiter with whom I worked as an apprentice. When he moved into the room, you knew he was present, he was excellent, and there was an admiration for him. He always looked out for excellence in how he appeared, what he said, and how he did things. I saw in this maitre d’ that if you do things exceptionally, you’re just as important as they are. I realized I could be as important if I do what I do right, no matter what it is. In fact, that idea has become the motto of Ritz-Carlton: “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” Over the past twenty-two years, we have surveyed some five million people, seeking to understand the characteristics and competencies of effective leaders and managers. One of the most striking findings from this vast study was this: Managers are typically rated high on work ethic (modeling) but low on their ability to provide focus and clear direction (pathfinding). As a result, people are neither clear about, nor accountable to, key priorities, and whole organizations fail to execute. The disconnect is this people are working harder than ever, but because they lack clarity and vision, they aren’t getting very far. They, in essence, are pushing a rope with all of their might.

Whereas modeling inspires trust, pathfinding creates order without demanding it. As soon as the people involved agree upon what matters most organizationally, they share the criteria that will drive all decisions that follow. This clarifying communication gives focus. It creates order. It creates stability. It also enables agility, which we will explore later in the empowering role.

Vision on a personal scale translates into pathfinding in an organizational setting. Whereas individually you identify what you see to be significant, now your challenge and role is to create a shared view of what is important, of what matters most. Consider for a moment the following questions you might ask about your employees: The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision; you can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.

THEODORE M. HESBURGH, PRESIDENT, NOTRE DAME

1. Do people clearly understand the organizational goals?

2. Are they committed?

Helping people clearly understand and get committed to significant goals requires you to involve them in decision making. Together you determine the destination of the organization (vision and mission). Then everybody in the organization will have ownership in the path that leads to the destination (values and strategic plan).

In determining together what is most important to an organization or team, you need to come to grips with the realities you face. Once you understand them, you work until a shared vision and value system are embodied in some kind of a mission statement and strategic plan. Speaking of the need to first become grounded in foundational realities, author Clayton M. Christensen wrote: Every company in every industry works under certain forces laws of organizational nature that act powerfully to define what that company can and cannot do. Managers faced with disruptive technologies fail their companies when these forces overpower them.

By analogy, the ancients who attempted to fly by strapping feathered wings to their arms and flapping with all their might as they leaped from high places invariably failed. Despite their dreams and hard work, they were fighting against some very powerful forces of nature.

No one could be strong enough to win this fight. Flight became possible only after people came to understand the relevant natural laws and principles that defined how the world worked: the law of gravity, Bernoulli’s principle, and the concepts of lift, drag, and resistance. When people designed flying systems that recognized or harnessed the power of these laws and principles, rather than fighting them, they were finally able to fly to heights and distances that were previously unimaginable.2 You must grapple with four realities market realities, core competencies, stakeholder wants and needs, and values before you will fully comprehend and be prepared to execute the pathfinding role: • Market Realities. How do people in your organization or team perceive the marketplace? What is the larger political, economic and technological context? What are the competitive forces? What are the trends and characteristics of the industry? What about the possibility of disruptive technologies and disruptive business models that could make obsolete the entire industry or basic tradition?

• Core Competencies. What are your unique strengths? I’m very impressed with Jim Collins’s approach to pathfinding. In his book Good to Great, he presents three overlapping circles, which represent your main strengths. He calls it the Hedgehog Concept.3 These circles identify three questions: What are you really good at—maybe, even, what can you be best in the world at? Second, what are you deeply passionate about? And third, what will people pay for? In other words, what are the human needs and wants being met that would drive your economic engine? The nexus between these three overlapping circles represents the foundation of your value proposition.

If we were to add one more question, What does your conscience counsel? we would have a whole-person approach (body economic engine; mind be best at; heart passion; and spirit conscience). The overlapping of all four areas is where your voice is to be found . As discussed before, this approach would apply to an individual finding his or her voice, as well as to an organization finding its voice.

• Stakeholder Wants and Needs. Think of all the different stake-holders—first and most importantly, the target customers. What do they really want and need? What are their issues, problems and concerns? What do their customers want and need? What is the market reality of the industry in which they operate? What possible technologies or business models could disrupt them or make them obsolete? What about the owners, those that have supplied the capital or paid the taxes what are their wants and needs? What about the associates, the employees, your coworkers what are their wants and needs? What about all the suppliers, distributors and dealers the entire supply chain? What about the community and the natural environment?

• Values. What are these people’s values? What are your values? What is the central purpose of the organization? What is its central strategy in accomplishing that purpose? What job are they hiring you to do? What are the values that are to serve as guidelines? How are they prioritized in different contexts in times of stress and pressure? Most people have never even decided what matters most to them. They haven’t developed the criteria that will inform and govern all other decisions, and now we’re trying to do it for an entire group, team or organization. Think how complex that is, how interdependent really, how challenging.

These are the kinds of questions and issues that must be clarified before you can focus. This is why it takes such character, competence, vision, discipline and passion governed by conscience.

Pathfinding is the toughest undertaking of all because you deal with so many diverse personalities, agendas, perceptions of reality, trust levels and egos. This underscores why modeling is the most important and central governing role. If people cannot trust the person and/or team initiating the pathfinding process, there will be no identification, and involvement will be very dysfunctional.

It took the modeling character and the competence of a George Washington to integrate and harmonize the brilliance and differences of a Thomas Jefferson, a John Adams, a Benjamin Franklin, an Alexander Hamilton, and other Founding Fathers of the American Republic, until finally the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution with its first Ten Amendments, called the Bill of Rights, were produced. Accomplishing this pathfinding work was the toughest of all tasks in founding the United States of America. But those visionary, guiding documents have enabled the United States to survive major traumas to its national life—the Civil War, the great wars, the Vietnam War, Watergate, presidential scandals, and presidential elections. And talk about empowerment, four and a half percent of the world’s population produces almost a third of the world’s goods!

ACHIEVING SHARED VISION AND VALUES

People frequently use the analogy of being on the same page or song sheet to describe achieving shared vision and values. It’s an excellent analogy because it suggests there is agreement about what matters most in the organization’s vision, values and strategic value proposition; and when played or sung together, the music is in harmony.

Sharing is an interesting word. When I share something with you, I give what I have to you. If you identify with me, believe in what I am about, and trust me, then I might simply share with you my vision. You might buy into that vision even more than if you had developed it yourself because you actually give more credence to my experience than to your own. If, on the other hand, you feel competent and desirous of getting involved and I simply share or announce to you my plan as our plan, then you have no emotional commitment. It is not shared. You would feel that the mission and value proposition were imposed upon you. We are not on the same song sheet.

In short, the mission statement and strategic plan are one thing, but the process of getting everyone on that same song sheet is another thing of equal importance. It is a major undertaking. The leadership work of modeling is truly manifest in the pathfinding role. Otherwise, people don’t get on the same song sheet, they don’t emotionally align on the strategic issues, and downstream everything goes awry. Then the only saving grace will be the sheer survival instinct inside of people. If the competition is also in disarray, you might survive. But if your main competitors synergistically unite within themselves, particularly if they are world class, you’re history.

FILM: Goal!

If you’ve ever watched one of your young children or grandchildren play soccer (aka “magnet-ball”) on a weekend morning, you’ll get a laugh out of this great little film and will feel like you’re right back on the sidelines. Notice the similarities in the challenge you face at work in trying to get everyone focused on the same big goal. Go to www.The8thHabit.com/offers now and select Goal! from the Films menu. You’ll really enjoy this!

THE PATHFINDING (FOCUS) TOOLS—THE MISSION STATEMENT AND STRATEGIC PLAN

Pathfinding is for an organization or team what modeling is for an individual. It’s deciding what to focus on as an organization, as a team, or as a family. You ask the same kind of values-and-purposes questions that you do as an individual, only now the group does it collectively regarding their specific mission. Through an interactive process, you create a written mission statement and strategic plan (value proposition and goals). The mission statement should encompass your sense of purpose, your vision and your values.

The strategic plan is a crisp description of how you will provide value to your customers and stakeholders; it’s your value proposition. It’s your focus. It’s the organization’s “voice.” In coming up with your strategic plan, you need to know who your customers and stakeholders are, who you want them to be, the valued service or product you are offering them, and your plan, including deadlines, to achieve certain goals in getting and keeping customers. For a family, a strategic plan is simply your action plan for realizing your vision and values in everyday life.

EMPOWERING MISSION STATEMENTS

In my experience, empowering shared mission statements are usually always produced when there are 1) enough people who are 2) fully informed, 3) interacting freely and synergistically, 4) in an environment of high trust. In fact, most mission statements created under these conditions will contain the same basic ideas and values. Words may vary, but they usually all touch on the four dimensions and needs of life—physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

The power of the Ritz-Carlton extraordinary service culture is its foundational view of people, both of themselves and of their customers: “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” The heart of Horst Schulze’s leadership is his view of the dignity and need for meaning of the whole person. Read again and reflect on his words (p. 217).

Remember, only those people who are allowed to tap into the needs and motivations of all four parts of their nature will find their voice and volunteer their highest contributions. For the body, the need and motivation is survival—economic prosperity; for the mind, growth and development; for the heart, love and relationships; and for the spirit, meaning, integrity and contribution.

The organization has the same four needs:

1. Survival—financial health (BODY)

2. Growth and development—economic growth, customer growth, innovation of new products and services, increasing professional and institutional competency (MIND)

3. Relationships—strong synergy, strong external networks and partnering, teamwork, trust, caring, valuing differences (HEART)

4. Meaning, integrity and contribution—serving and lifting all stakeholders: customers, suppliers, employees and their families, communities, society—making a difference in the world (SPIRIT) The key to unleashing the power of the workforce is what I call co-missioning. It’s clarifying the mission, vision and values of the organization in a way that overlaps the four needs of the individuals with the four needs of the organization. Every person’s job in the organization ought to be co-missioned to explicitly meet the four needs of both the person and the organization. An implicit Universal Mission Statement would read something like this: “To improve the economic well-being and quality of life of all stakeholders.” Your organization’s, department’s, team’s, or family’s mission statement would not only embody the spirit of the universal mission statement but would also represent how you uniquely do that your unique gift, capacity, niche your voice.

NO MARGIN, NO MISSION

I’ve always been driven by a sense of mission and purpose. But it was not many years into starting my own company that I was forcefully taught the reality: no margin, no mission. In other words, unless you run your enterprise in a way that produces consistent profits over time, eventually you lose your opportunity to deliver on your mission.

Most businesses, on the other hand, are so focused on margin and meeting the quarterly numbers that they lose sight of the very vision that inspired them to get into business in the first place. They lose sight of their people and their families and the communities they operate in. They forget how interdependent they are with all their stakeholders. They lose their sense of mission and contribution. The problems that this latter approach has created have driven much of my professional work with organizations for the last forty years. There are significant negative consequences that follow from both the Mission/No Margin and the Margin/No Mission approaches . Neither approach is sustainable particularly in today’s global economy. The key is to go for both. The key is balance.