The power of Vision Alignment inside organizations to bring teams together

Thomas (2002) states that “purpose and vision provided a target that could align the efforts of different people to solve problems and cooperate.” When a vision and a sense of effort exist among the members of an organization, they become lined up in a harmonized way while working together to achieve a shared purpose.

George (2007) says: The most empowering condition of all is when the entire organization is aligned with its mission, and people’s passions and purpose are in synch with each other. Individuals usually have their own passions that drive them. If the organization’s leaders can demonstrate how they can fulfill their purpose while achieving the organization’s mission, then alignment can occur.

Within an organization, if teams don’t have synchronization, they will be completing tasks without bringing together passions and goals. According to Logan (2008): Alignment … means bringing pieces into the same line – the same direction. Tribes based on alignment want to maximize each person’s contribution, provided that they stay pointed in the same general direction like magnetized iron filings. As long as the tribe remains aligned on core values and a noble cause, its unity is strong and produces coordinated action married with passionate resolve.

Leaders need to make sure that they are able to bring members together so that they have a shared desire and purpose that allows them to joint efforts and dedicate their energy and commitment in a constructive manner.

Ball (1997) says: Alignment of business goals means agreement among the business’s mission, vision, values, goals, plans, and actions – from the overall company perspective all the way to the individual perspective. Alignment in business also means “unity” – when everyone is working harmoniously as a unit toward the same common objectives and purposes.

The challenge for leaders is to try to create a clear line of sight between the organization’s mission, vision, and values, and the goals, plans, and actions of individuals.  Kaplan (2006) writes: Corporations must continually search for ways to make the whole more valuable than the sum of its parts. Alignment is critical if enterprises are to achieve synergies throughout their business and support units. It also allows creating synergies and values when the entities involved work together to reach a consensus about the objectives for the relationship. Since this builds understanding and trust, enterprises must have active policies to communicate, educate, motivate and align employees with the strategy.

Finding ways to bring members together and in line with the goals of an organization, leaders create essential unity among them. The existence of an atmosphere where members feel the worthiness to communicate and work together motivates them to promote the growth and success of the organization that they are working for.

Photo credit to Michael Cardus - michaelcardus

Covey (2004) observes: Aligning is a form of nourishing the body politic and the spirit of trust, vision and empowerment and deals with the question. Are we on target? Are we on track regarding what matters most? This helps the organization to stay constantly focused on its highest-priority goals.

According to George, the Medtronic’s heart-valve factory in southern California has extremely skilled employees that reconfigure valves from pig hears to replace human heart valves. One of those workers showed him that her passion for her work is tied directly to the company mission when she explained that her “job is to make heart valves that save lives” and by setting high standards for herself (George, 2007). As per George, that same worker explains: Before I sign my name to a completed valve, I decided whether it is good enough to put in my mother or my son. Unless it meets that standard, it does not pass. If just one of the valves I make is defective, someone may die. To the company 99.9 percent quality may be acceptable, but I could not live with myself if I caused someone’s death. But when I go home at night, I fall asleep thinking about the five thousand people who are alive today because of heart valves I made.

According to Logan, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) “is an organization where people often disagree about rule changes or revenue splits. Yet as long as they stay focused on ‘everybody’s gotta win’ they can work together.” This way unity is strong because the entire participants remain aligned on core values and a noble cause (Logan, 2008).

So when the employees’ passions, plans, goals and actions are not lined up with the organization’s mission, values, strategy, goals, plans and actions that translates into an absence of shared values and inexistence of a noble joint cause. At the same time, there is the risk of having employees that do not feel motivated nor passionate about what they do as a team. Each employee tends to acts on their own direction and the company cannot obtain synergies nor maximize the contribution that each of them could provide to the success of the organization as a whole. This, obviously, doesn’t help the company or its members to stay focused in the same direction and on what is most important for its success. It can also affect trust and understanding within the team since most of its members do not recognize how each of their jobs fit into the big picture.

The power of creating a clear and meaningful vision inside an organization

According to Benjamin, vision is the starting point for any company and its team to be successful and is the road map to self-motivation and purpose for the team. To create an authentic and effective vision, there are several characteristics that have to be verified.

Vision needs to be clear and unambiguous and have meaning to each individual so that each team member can think about how he/she can add value to others and to the organization and contribute this way with a diversity of opinions. Benjamin goes on to explain that vision also needs to lead to distinctiveness, to be innovation rich and to provide a reason for extraordinary effort, in order to create excitement and to be energetically defended and supported throughout a broad base in the organization, becoming at the same time useful for decision making. Finally, a vision should also be sustainable through other changes and be identifiable with a greater good so that the team can feel connected, committed and able to reach or exceed defined goals (Benjamin, 2005).

Kotter (2002) states: Without a good vision, you can choose a bad direction and never realize that you’ve done so. You will have difficulty coordinating large numbers of people without using endless directives. You’ll never get the energy needed to accomplish something very difficult. Strategic plans motivate few people but a compelling vision can appeal to the heart and motivate anyone.

For an organization the vision should be the major starting point. In order to be motivated individuals and teams need to see and feel that there is a higher reason or a drive to work for. Just as important is the need for the vision to encompass diverse opinions and be created and shared by all the team members. According to Senge (1990) “The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared pictures of the future that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance.” In circumstances where the vision doesn’t incorporate a diversity of opinions, it becomes necessary to create a new vision or make a change in direction. Senge (1990) states: “When there is a genuine vision (as opposed to all-too familiar vision statement) people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to.” This is a challenge that leaders have to face while putting action to the vision.

Kouzes (2007) states: Leaders have to arouse others to join in a cause and to want to move decisively and boldly forward” and “to enlist others you have to help them see and feel how their own interests and aspirations are aligned with the vision. You have to paint a compelling picture of the future, one that enables constituents to experience what it would be like to actually live and work in an exciting and uplifting future … Vision is the force that invents the future.

In this way, a shared vision will allow the company and its team to better face and adapt to the constant challenges of the future and obtain through it a true competitive advantage point. According to Kotter (2007), “Employees are emboldened to try new approaches, to develop new ideas, and to provide leadership. The only constraint is that the actions fit within the broad parameters of the overall vision. The more people involved, the better the outcome.”

For Kouzes (2007), “Leaders have to enlist others in a common vision. To enlist people in a vision, leaders must know their constituents and speak their interests at heart.” Kouzes explains that when Dick Nettell became the new site executive for Bank of America’s Consumer Call Center in Concord, California, he “found that the constant turnover in leadership and changes in priorities had been sending them down the path of poor performance.” In order to change those problems Dick decided to talk and listen to people. By doing that he obtained a list of aspirations that helped him to craft a new vision, mission and set of values. Later he tried to involve every team in the call center by asking “does it make sense to you? Is there something you would change?” He also challenged everyone to take the initiative to make the new vision a reality while making clear that “from then on changing the call center was everybody’s business …You have to be part of this” (Kouzes, 2007). By incorporating diversity of opinions, Dick was committed to create a new vision that could be clear, unambiguous and had meaning to individuals. At the same time he empowered the team members, by giving them reasons for extraordinary effort and excitement so that the new vision could also gain a broad base of support, become a reality and identifiable with a greater good.

Kouzes(2007) continues on explaining that Dick was aware of the need of continuing the conversation: Every day is opening day … it doesn’t matter what you did yesterday. Each and every decision and action is a moment of truth… in today’s environment, if you want to be successful, doing things the same way just won’t get it done, period. Expectations continue to be raised, by our shareholders, by our managers, and by our customers. And if we’re not willing to be innovative and do things differently, we’re going to have the competition pass us like we’re sitting still on the freeway.

By putting the characteristics of vision to work on this call center of Bank of America, Dick was not only able to create a road map that gives a purpose and a meaning to the all the team members, but also to increase team’s performance while making the entire organization better prepared and motivated to change, to recreate itself, its resources and to gain continuous competitive vantage point in a global, diverse and interactive marketplace that is constantly changing.

To be able to better perform the company’s mission and the goals the leader needs to set a good example for the rest of the team and try to help the organization to create a new, clear and unambiguous vision that integrates the ingenuity and the values of its collaborators. Without this attribute, the vision will continue to have no meaning to the individuals nor can it be accepted as a personal responsibility by each of the team members.

By asking and identifying what opinions, ideas, points of view and aspirations each team member has, and by integrating those with each other and with the organization’s interests, it will be possible to create a tentative vision that needs to be then corroborated by the entire team accordingly through the organization of several meetings and other actions defined in an action plan. This will create a new shared final vision, a collaborative and motivated team that will lead to distinctiveness, allowing the company to be more innovative and better prepared to deal with its challenges, while taking into consideration the competition, its customers, technology and its own team.

The leader also needs to keep in mind that this should be a continuous process since, every day, changes occur in the marketplace and the team and the company need to be willing to innovate and do things in different ways so that it can still create innovative strategies that help to maintain a competitive advantage point.

Integrity as a powerful tool for leaders to show consistency between what they say and whay they do

Leaders that are concerned with the future and the success of their organization, know they must adopt exemplary practices to transmit to others the values and the type of ethical behavior expected and accepted. Adopting this method enables leaders to create the basis for an ethical business culture based on respect and commitment.

According to Richardson (2008): Leaders need to lead by example and to empower every member of the organization to demonstrate the firm’s commitment to ethics in their relationships with suppliers, customers, employees, and shareholders. They have to convert each employee regardless of their position, into a guardian of the firm’s integrity. Taking time to establish and maintain a culture of integrity, honesty, and ethicality will bring long-term benefits for all quarters. It will also pay important dividends throughout the life of the firm.

Rogers (2003) states:  Integrity means adhering to a code of ethics or a set of values, and it is a vital aspect of every personal and professional endeavor. It means matching our actions with our beliefs across a variety of situations. If leaders “walk the talk”, even in the toughest times and base their interactions on all principles of honesty, integrity and partnership they will be perceived as having high integrity and trustworthiness. These perceptions will impact business results since integrity, as a measure of coherence and consistency, is key to building and sustaining trust.

Leaders have to practice what they believe in and what they tell others to do.  Only this way, will it be possible for them to be seen as credible and trustworthy.

According to Nash the root of the word “integrity” means “to hold together.” Today’s leaders who are committed to integrity should show the power “to hold together” – to balance – a multitude of important and at times conflicting values and the power to bring personal morality and management concerns into the same dimension because “no manager can afford, from an economic or moral standpoint, to keep his or her moral notions off in a separate compartment, reserved for the narrowest and most obvious cases” (Nash, 1993).

Leaders have to be aware that their conduct and their behavior impacts others and affects the perception that others have of them. If they want to earn respect, be admired and secure followers, they must be truthful to their beliefs and conduct maintaining authenticity of whom they are. If they choose to create an illusion of themselves by not being who they really are, sooner or later, the truth will surface and there will be no authenticity or integrity in their actions.

Leaders Beware: do you know what truly motivates others?

For a leader to build commitment and engage others, he or she needs to understand what factors motivate people, what their passions are, why they are working at this particular organization, why they act and respond in a certain ways and why they became committed to the work they are involved in.

Maslow proposed a theory of hierarchy of needs, arranged as Physiological, Security, Social, Esteem and Self actualization (Sarin, 2009). Each of these is related to one another and placed in hierarchy or prepotency. People move up the pyramid of needs as each level is satisfied and once a need is gratified, it no longer motivates a person’s behavior (Sarin, 2009). Sarin mentions that several other theories like Murray’s Manifest Needs, Alderfer’s ERG Theory, Herzberg’s two-factor Theory, Equity Theory, Expectancy Theory, McClelland’s Theory, Goal Setting Theory, McGregor’s theory X and Y, Ouchi’s Theory Z have been used intensively and extensively to  motivate employees depending on many factors, including: nature of work, competition, availability of manpower / talent, socio-economic needs, laws, culture, politics, corporate environment, insecurities, life style, professional standards, opportunities, growth, emotions, values, egos, expectations, participation, decision making, leadership styles, and objectives (Sarin, 2009).

Photo credit to michaelcardus

In today’s world people continue to work to fulfill a variety of needs. Of course, money is the most important reason that the majority of the people say they get up for every morning, so that they can pay bills and satisfy other extrinsic needs. But unfortunately that doesn’t mean that all of them are happy with what they do. For this reason, money alone, more than ever, is not enough to keep a large number of employees motivated and committed to their jobs.

10 Tips to Effectively and Proactively Manage Your Online Reputation

Until very recently, only the people with access and influence, or some amount of luck were the ones that could take advantage of publishers and other contacts to help them promote their work and personal image. The same was true of television and print media, which were considered two of the most powerful tools because of their influence and ability to manipulate perceptions through content.

But, with the recent “democratization” of communication, linked with the development of the Internet and the emergence of a number of online tools and applications, the way companies and people interact, collaborate, communicate, play, work, share information, buy and sell products or services has changed. And that change is profound.

Nowadays, anyone with internet access and a willingness to be proactive and to put some passion into learning how these tools work is able to gain a voice, add visibility to the outside world and to create, share, distribute and publicize his or her own ideas, preferences, opinions, successes, experiences, and knowledge. At the same time, it became an alternate method for promoting who we are and to “influence” the way we want others to perceive us as individuals and as professionals.

It also facilitated the process of establishing informal relations and dialogues with people who we may or may not know, or who were once inapproachable owing to that fact that they were reserved or perhaps shrouded by influence games and secret contacts.

Because of the ultra-competitive world in which we live today, it became increasingly important for each of us to try to find and use creative ways to create buzz about ourselves, and that can help us to differentiate and stand out from the crowd and the competition while communicating those factors, qualities, characteristics that make us unique and valuable. Obviously, part of the solution lies in effectively managing and monitoring the online reputation for our own personal brand.

Simultaneously, we should also be careful and check whether the information that exists online and what others are saying about us is correct and represents a clear, positive and relevant image of who we really are. Especially when there is a greater likelihood that someone, such former colleagues, recruitment companies, friends, family, ex-boyfriends, teachers, consultants and others, would use Google to try to discover things about us.

Even when it continues to be impossible to fully control what others say about us, we can and should try to at least be better prepared to respond, minimize and possibly prevent the effects and confusion that might follow from misinformation. There is nothing worse than having incorrect, embarrassing or negative information associated with our name, particularly at a time when reputations can be created and destroyed online in less than seconds and at the speed of 140 characters.

For all this, I would like to ask you if you ever Googled your name between quotes on Google.com? If yes, did you like what you found? If you haven’t done this yet, what are you waiting for?

Make sure you do it and then read the 10 practical tips below on how to better manage your online reputation.

Contrary to what many people think, it’s no longer enough to simply create profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You have to go a little further and complement this with other types of proactive and well structured tactics

1. Register your name: For less than $10 a year, it’s possible to reserve and register your name as an online domain through services such as GoDaddy.com; DomainsInSeconds.com; Joker.com; Registera.com; IWantMyName.com; Register.com; etc. Preferably select one that ends with.com or. net (or. co,. tv) since they are the ones that search engines respect most. If your name is quite common and is no longer available consider using your middle initial or a shorter version of your name or even an invented word that can be easily associated with your own brand. Thing about also buying a “hosting” service that lets you build a website where you can put up your credentials. Then make sure that you list your website or blog on relevant websites, search engines and directories such as technorati, blogcatalog and mybloglog

The Leader as a Role Model

The transition from the Industrial Age to the Interactive Age is leading to constant changes and people are dealing with feelings of uncertainty regarding the future. At the same time, this period of transition affects the way things are done and alters the way people live their lives and interact with others. In order to become an authentic, respected, and transformational leader in these extraordinary times, there is a need to be willing to face unknown challenges and deal with complex situations. A leader must also to be able to find exemplary ways to lead, to guide and to manage in order to gain commitment towards common goals. In short, a leader needs to be a role model.

According to The Oxford English Dictionary (1989), the word ‘lead’ was first mentioned in 825 A.C.E, and its meaning was defined as: “to cause to go along with oneself, to bring or take (a person or an animal) to a place.” This shows that those who lead need to bring or take others along with them to a desired destination. In order to do that, leaders must be aware that every single action and step that they do and practice will have an enormous impact on the way others interpret and respond to day to day interactions. For this reason leaders should strive to find the best practices that will contribute to the creation of positive environments where, by leading by example, it will be possible to positively motivate others.

A leader needs to use exemplary practices so that others can accept him or her as a positive role model to follow in the pursuit of a common purpose and in getting things done. Leaders must be self-aware about who they are and what they believe in, so that, when interacting with others, that positive example of acting with sincerity and integrity can translate into a sense of trust while providing direction and encouraging others to better respond to day-to-day situations.

According to Orlick (2007):

Leaders have to lead by example and thereby create the positive atmosphere that encourages others to give their best and build the best team possible. A team is only a team if team members act like a team. Otherwise it is just a bunch of individuals doing their own thing for themselves.

More than ever, it is essential that leaders demonstrate, through their actions and behavior, inspirational ways that can easily and clearly show their passions, beliefs and desires in creating an authentic environment of collaboration. Through all of his or her actions, the true leader should always realize and keep in mind that the whole is always better than the sum of the parts. Because of this, it is essential that true leaders create an environment where people can, are willing to bind together in their interactions.

Baldoni (2008) indicates that “example emerges from giving of yourself to the team so that people know you are with them not in words but also in action.”

Leaders set examples that others follow; therefore, leading by example is needed. It is also necessary that leaders, through their every day actions, model ownership and commitment to the organization while taking personal accountability for decisions. They must perform the same way that they ask employees to perform.

As Crosby (2005) states:

A leader has a special responsibility for being a politician and role model for carrying out the organization’s purpose and core values. Perhaps the most effective tool a leader can wield for accomplishing an organization’s mission is his or her own behavior. Effective leaders engage in transformational behavior (being a role model in the service of an inspiring cause; promoting a challenging, meaningful vision; providing intellectual stimulation and individualized attention for followers) along with transactional behavior.

Leaders need to understand that their actions and responses to situations vastly impact the performance of those that are paying attention to their conduct.  In order to get others engaged in following their leadership, and in order to motivate employees to their work, leaders also need to find and implement creative practices that help lead effectively and encourage others to feel passionate about what they do and what they believe in.

Bass (2006) says that:

The core transformational leadership behavior, which includes developing and articulating a vision, providing a positive role model, and motivating employees to look beyond their self-interest for the good of the group. A leader who is a role model for followers, and one who behaves consistently with the values she or he espouses, can more easily build commitment to a group’s or an organization’s values, goals, or standards of behavior.

For a leader to build commitment and engage others, he or she needs to understand what factors motivate people, what their passions are, why they are working at this particular organization, why they act and respond in a certain ways and why they became committed to the work they are involved in.