30 Aug Do we even need a vision?
‘Maybe it’s time to let go of the vision thing!’ exclaimed a delegate in this week’s WorldsView conversation café. If you missed it, this month we discussed “Where are we going again?” We wanted to get a deeper understanding of the psychological processes involved in creating, communicating, or receiving organisational ‘vision.’
The need for “vision’ dominates leadership and strategic theory – to have some sense of where the organisation is going. And yet we cannot reliably create these directions in a way that inspires and engages people. We know that when it comes to organisational vision, most organisational members cannot remember it (often including senior executives), and many more do not connect to or care about it.
Nevern Subermoney shared a clinical psychology perspective that explored some psychological obstacles to receiving, communicating, or crafting organisational vision. He invited us to consider that creating, communicating, and receiving an organisational vision will involve known psychological processes.
In creating a vision, Nevern discussed the roles of imagination, future orientation, motivation and emotion, as well as commitment on the leader’s ability to create vision. He also shared tips for leaders to improve readiness for visionary work. Getting yourself into a positive mindset invites creativity, and then easing into imagining various futures assists with preparing one’s mind for vision work.
In communication the vision, Nevern drew from clinical practice to discuss the importance of the relationship, with significant emphasis on safety, trust, and time. To do this, Nevern drew on the Therapeutic Alliance in clinical work, and drew on studies of the effect of the quality of the alliance on outcomes. He also highlighted Motivational Interviewing as a communication mechanism – discovering alignment rather than selling alignment.
When thinking about why it is that even a well developed and well communicated vision might not be well received, Nevern guided us through the effects of contingent reward, cognitive dissonance, personal relevance, cognitive overload, and absence of ownership – each of which we recognised as genuine issues in organisational life. This is why taking time to respect the perspectives, contributions and questions of organisational members plays a significant part in alignment and engagement.
Colleagues from a variety of organisations shared their perspectives and stories around the challenges of crafting vision and finding ways to align the organisation. The conversation was so rich that although we finished the plenary session on time, a small group of clients and partners volunteered to remain on the call for another 30 minutes!
Some Key questions were:
- Do we need “vision,” or do we just need a sense of purpose? In other words, if we know why we are here, maybe we do not need to align on where we are going – lets just cope with what is in front of us. We did not have enough time to explore this fully but acknowledged that this is a real “state” of many organisations that work well enough.
- Given the many obstacles to honest visions that do bind many people into coordinated action, is it reasonable to expect that all organisational members align to the vision? Should we strive for alignment rather than demand it? What does that mean, and what does it look like?
- Does “vision” just feel like a stale and exhausting idea, which needs 21stcentury language to revive it – do we need new labels on this idea?
There were so many lines of discussion that the group felt we may need a part 2, bringing in a few more voices on the topic. If you want to join our September café conversation, please follow our LinkedIn page here and watch out for the invitations next week. We are moving from the leadership to the strategic side of this conversation.
We are immensely grateful to everyone who joined the call this week and hope to see you in September. If you would like to watch the video of the call and catch up on what you missed – please click through below and enjoy!