A long, long time ago (like in the 1990's) leaders had the idea that it was their job to see the future and in many & various ways cast their vision to their people.
I'm only being a little snotty.
This approach at least acknowledged that people need a vision. Nobody likes being told what to "do." They want something to believe in. They want to know that what they do matters.
But across organizations - in both the for profit and the not-for-profit worlds - we have begun to realize that people rarely catch a vision they haven't participated in dreaming up. What's more, when it comes to the kinds of dreams that mean big changes in their organizational life, most people - about 85% of people in a typical organization - aren't natural dreamers.
Check out this "Change Openness Distribution" graph to see what I'm talking about. We used it during our webinar on "vision" this week and lots of you requested it. Here it is:
Download change_openness_distribution_may_27_2008_webinar.pdf
What's a leader to do?You can talk until you're blue in the face about how great it will be if everybody will just jump on board your dream. But the only way you're ever going to get all those "middle" and "late" adopters on board with you - and there are a lot of them! - is if they're there with you from the very beginning.
Today's best leaders know it's not enough to be a "vision caster." You have to be a vision collaborator. That means being able to ask purposeful questions, using participative processes, in a fun & playful way, within your unique context, for the sake of producing a vision that mobilizes and motivates everybody in your organization.
It's a heck of a lot more work on the front end. It usually just takes longer to develop a vision that people will believe in and invest in – it can be tempting to try to cast a vision and take shortcuts.
But the payoff on the back end is people who know who they are and believe in what they're doing.
That's worth investing in.
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