Introduction
We were deep into a conversation about planning for the next two years. In particular, we were focused on how to create and then execute a focused and flexible plan given the current turbulence in market conditions and the unknowns related to funding for growth plus the ongoing issues related to staff turnover. In the middle of this conversation, he referenced an organizational specific term that is commonly used during senior management meetings.
I interrupted him after he referenced the term and said, “Hold on Mike. You and I both know this term, and have unpacked and explored it over multiple visits. It is commonly used at the VP level and up for at least 10+ years. However, 60-65% of your middle managers are new to the company due to The Great Resignation and the impact of COVID. These new people may have heard this term, but I doubt they understand it, especially when it comes to executing the strategic plan or translating the proposed strategic into a one year operational plan.”
He paused before he responded. You could almost hear the gears turning inside his head. Then, he said, “You right. I use it often, but when I think about it, I just realized that the term came from a training we participated in at least 10 years ago. If you were not at the original training, or in any of the subsequent follow-up discussions, then the term means nothing. It sounds nice, but it does not define, or influence their decision-making process. That’s a bummer. We have a lot of work to do during the next 6 months. We need clarity about this term at multiple levels rather than just at the senior level.” I agreed with him, and we then discussed how to do this.
Patrick Lencioni in his book, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (Jossey-Bass, 2000) writes that successful organizations are smart and healthy. They do this by building and maintaining a cohesive leadership team. They also do this by creating organizational clarity. As he writes, “A healthy organization minimizes the potential for confusion by clarifying: why the organization exists, which behavioral values are fundamental, what specific business it is in, who its competitors are, how it is unique, what it plans to achieve, [and] who is responsible for what.” This depth of clarity then becomes a framework for action.
Peter, Drucker, Frances Hesselbein, and Joan Snyder Kuhl in their book, Peter Drucker’s Five Most Important Questions: Enduring Wisdom for Today’s Leaders (Wiley, 2015), create the same kind of clarity by answering the following five questions: “What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? [and] What is our plan?” Which ever set of questions one chooses, the Lencioni version or the Drucker version, the goal is to create a common understanding and focus which everyone utilizes when making decisions, problem solving, working together, and when serving the customer.
The challenge this year is that too many leaders are using terms that make complete sense to them, but are neither helpful or useful to those who are translating the mission, vision, and core values into daily operational choices. The key to solving this problem is to recognize that leadership and clarity are interconnected. The more we know about leadership helps us to know more about how to effectively create clarity. And the more we know about how to create clarity helps us to become better leaders.
Leader As Architects Of Meaning
Most people say that leaders create clarity. I get where they are coming from when they say this. But from my experience, the best leaders I have ever met understand that effective leaders build clarity rather than create clarity. And they do this thoughtfully and carefully over time.
The dictionary defines the verb create as to “bring something into existence,” or to “cause something to happen.” On the other hand, the dictionary tells us that the definition of the verb build is to put “parts or material together,” and to “make stronger.”
When we use the popular phrase “creating clarity,” in reality we are building a mindset, i.e. an in-depth understanding about how the company works and how the company serves the customer. We are not just creating an awareness of an idea or ideal. We are instead choosing to build a strategic and operational understanding that connects key pieces of information into a clear perspective and framework for decision-making.
When I taught a year long course on leadership and organizational change called the From Vision to Action Leadership Training, I told my students that leaders were architects of meaning. This often stretched some students’ perspective. Nevertheless, with some unpacking of the term, all of them agreed with the concept because they had experienced it over the course of their own careers.
First, I explained this term by referencing the work of Margaret Wheatley in her book, Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time (Berrett-Koehler, 2005). As she wrote, “All change results from a change in meaning.” Leaders are an architect of meaning because they routinely wrestle with the answers to big questions of identity and direction, such as Who are we?, Where are we going?, and How are we going to get there?. The answers to each of these questions, and the previously ones mentioned ones, begin by building an understanding of the strategic nexus.
The Strategic Nexus
At the heart of every successful company is a strategic nexus. The etymology of the word nexus come from the Latin word, nectar, which means “to bind.” A strategic nexus is the sum of two elements namely a core ideology made up of the mission, vision, and core values plus a strategic plan. Each element is vital and necessary, because the combination of the two becomes a guidance system for the company during changes in market conditions.
The purpose of the mission, vision and values is to create cultural clarity within the company. It is the DNA for this culture and gives purpose to the work that is done each day. Furthermore, these three components of the nexus are the line of continuity through change. They create meaning and significance. They inspire, orient and align people. They are the foundation for today and the future.
On the other hand, the purpose of the strategic plan is to stimulate progress, and to prevent status quo from becoming a source of stagnation. The plan also increases urgency, and creates focus at the operational level.
When the strategic nexus is unified and all involved understand the elements within it, they recognize that there is an inherent tension within the nexus. The mission, vision, and core values provides continuity and stability, i.e. preserving the core of the company, while the strategic plan urges change and continual improvement, i.e. stimulating progress.
When there is clarity about what is the strategic nexus and what each element provides the company, then all involved grasp that a viable strategic nexus has the potential to create a high-commitment and high-performance organization without getting caught in the trap of choosing between people or profits. A viable nexus supports making a profit while being mission-driven. It encourages collaboration and empowers the front line to make consistent decisions, even under pressure. This happens because all involved have the same mindset and the same degree of clarity about what should never change and what should always be changing. In short, clarity about the strategic nexus is a force multiplier, using a military term, and ensures effective action in the midst of uncertainty. And therefore the best leaders are architects of meaning, building clarity piece by piece.
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