Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
CEOs and senior leadership teams have historically done something similar. They go on retreat, set the organizational vision and then bring it down the mountain with much fanfare and little conversation around how everyone will implement it. What’s more, the vision can get tied up in revenue goals and not focus enough on why people should be excited about achieving it.
Retreats are still important to focus on the big picture and to align senior leaders and board members with the intended direction of any organization. To truly create and champion a successful vision, however, CEOs and senior leaders must answer the “who cares” factor with those who will deliver the vision.
Today’s CEOs must be just as attentive to the way people work and excel within their organizations as they are with market expectations. Customers expect sophistication, top performers expect new opportunities, and owners expect growth. Leadership from the mountaintop breeds mistrust — a key factor in employee disengagement.
Without a sense of purpose or personal meaning, employee engagement decreases — particularly among younger employees who have a greater sense of global and social responsibility than generations past. They are more likely to move on if the only reason for staying is financial security.
Organizational experts such as Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School, emphasize the need for alignment of financial and social concerns to ensure employee engagement with the vision and high performance.
Viewing market and customer demands as well as the motivations of employees, the CEO defines what success looks like — where the organization is headed and why. He or she crystallizes the vision, but the work doesn’t stop there.
CEOs must first gain agreement on the vision with members of the senior leadership team as well as board members and any other stakeholders such as outside owners. That’s when retreats can be effective. However, the next critical step is to communicate the vision to the rest of the organization in a way that gets people excited about moving in that direction.
The biggest mistake executives make with visioning is to deliver the information as a lecture or monologue instead of a dialogue. If employees can’t put their own fingerprint or interpretation on the vision, it will lack personal meaning to them. They need to understand how they, personally, will contribute to and benefit from achieving the vision. People only change if the pain of not changing is great or if they truly believe the benefits are worthwhile.
After the initial vision retreat, leaders should conduct ongoing conversations with employees to ensure a consistent understanding and excitement for how the vision is realized through their day-to-day activities — and what they will gain.
In its practical application, a vision is the measuring stick for decisions. It helps the CEO understand who is “on the team” and who isn’t. It helps inform decisions about talent and skills needed to carry out the vision, additional resources needed and timelines.
The vision also helps leaders head off investments and initiatives that are off track. For example, training opportunities, investments in technology or marketing and strategic partnerships should align with the direction of the organization.
Although the vision of the organization must include a values-based view for how the organization makes a meaningful difference to clients and stakeholders, it can still inform the analytical decisions required to accomplish it in terms of money, people and time invested.
Because the vision for any organization is an ongoing conversation, it can be impacted by outside factors such as the economy or innovations. There are companies that no longer exist because they didn’t adapt their vision to changing times.
Regular review and refinement of the vision will continue to engage employees and leaders in the larger picture of what they do every day. Like a good parent raising a child, CEOs look out for the best interests of the organization, investing in resources, talent and opportunities that support the vision. To be a good CEO, they have to focus on the end goal with every big or small decision — even if such decisions create short-term conflict.
So in effect, successful CEOs keep their eyes on the view from the mountaintop while at the same time remaining firmly rooted in the day-to-day realities on the ground of their organizations — modeling this paradox in a way that gets everyone around them to do the same.
