Brett Tilford

I was schooled in the art of leadership that said “vision” is a leaders most potent weapon. A vision brings clarity to your organization. It says, “this is who we are and this is where we’re going.” At the same time it informs your people who you aren’t, and what you will not be doing. Vision is what infuses life and passion into your organization. If your organization were a rocket, vision would be the fuel. As Bill Hybels, Senior Pastor of Willow Creek Church, so eloquently writes, “vision is painting a preferred picture of the future that inspires passion.”

For a long time I was a vision maniac. I wanted to know my vision and I wanted to know your vision. It was normal for me to ask human beings, “so, what’s your vision?”

However, over the years my faith in the power of a vision has faded.

I think this has been for a number of reasons. First, there were times when I would actually put my vision down on paper, only to reread it months later to find that I had lied. Some of the vision we had pursued, other parts had faded for one reason or another: wrong timing, failure to get buy in, but probably the most popular reason was that a huge portion of it simply wouldn’t work. This sounds like a complete disaster, but to my knowledge it really wasn’t. In fact I never had a team member come up to me and say, “Hey, remember that vision talk you gave a few months ago? Do you recognize that the thing we are doing now is different in significant ways?” It was almost as though, despite what every book on leadership taught, we were guided by something other than what was written down as our “organizational vision.”

So where exactly does this leave us as people and organizations? If a rousing vision isn’t the fuel for our rocket, what is?

Honestly, I don’t have a good term yet, but I’m thinking of “it.” “It” is that thing that just oozes out of a leader and his/her organization. They don’t have to talk about it or write it down. It’s simply who they are, and who their organization becomes.

For my youth ministry “it” was these things: organic and relational. Whatever we did had to flow from those things. It didn’t matter what was written down on as our vision. If it didn’t line up with those things… somehow we knew, “this just isn’t us.”

Another example of this inner guidance is my current company Fuor. We don’t actually have a vision. In the early days I kept asking “what is our vision, what is our vision, what the heck is our vision?” All the guys would just kind of look at me, hang their heads, and keep silent. I wanted clarity, by golly! I wanted to know all the details of what we are going to be about. But, you know what I’ve realized? We don’t know those things and that’s okay. However, mysterious as it may sound, when I start thinking about Fuor these ideas and concepts just come to my mind. We are all about quality and creativity. Whatever we do is going to be the best. Nothing second rate. Also, we can’t stand boredom, so it has to be creative and interesting. Right now “it” is primarily channeled into designing and developing websites. But, you know what? That may change. Building websites doesn’t best describe Fuor. Creativity and Quality does.

So what about your organization? Don’t tell me your elaborate plans for the future. Don’t try and pump me up with your word pictures.

Just describe to me your “it” and that should do the trick.

I have a hunch that “it” goes by another name called “core vales.” But that revelation has only now come to me as I write this post, so I’ll have to think it through.

More on this topic to come. I think we are on to something here.

I’ve had this feeling for awhile that Starbucks is losing their mojo. So imagine my surprise when I came across this post by business guru Tom Peters, voicing similar concerns. Apparently, Starbucks stock has been tanking and founder Howard Schultz has fired CEO Jim Donald and re-taken control of the floundering giant.

Peter’s writes, “Simple, as I see it. There is an Enemy of inestimable power—moreover, power growing by the day. Incidentally, the same Remorseless Enemy that brought McDonald’s to the brink a decade ago. Namely, itself-themselves. I “like,” in a fashion, “the Starbucks case.” The company does not have an external enemy worth talking about, or to blame the decline on. And its stock is surging South. Ergo, its enemy must, necessarily, be Starbucks. And if a company that is unchallenged in conventional terms is in a pickle, that bodes poorly for all of us. In fact, it’s downright scary.”

This has gotten me to thinking about organizations and those people at the top responsible for it all: leaders. What can we do in the face of such horror? The whole “being our own worst enemy” is a bit cliche.  Yet so stunningly true that we can’t ignore it.

Which is why I believe that a leader’s title should be “chief destroyer.”

Every day in our organization people are making decisions. This isn’t wrong. In fact, all of them make sense at the time and seem innocent enough.

However, over time, almost imperceptibly, all those decisions start adding up and things start getting weird and bogged down. The “vibe” at the office just isn’t the same. New ideas start getting shot down. Things start taking longer. People who fall in line are rewarded, while those who stir things up, are canned. Security is in, and risk taking is out.

The organization is no longer this entrepreneurial, lean, quick striking, gorilla warfare type unit… it’s more like Jabba the Hutt.

This is when the leader must get his/her “destroy” on: chopping and hacking left and right, asking the hard questions and then taking alarming risks.

Granted, some may say “This all seems a bit over the top.”

However, I would argue that in this crazy/hyper paced world, where you can be “in” one second and “out” the next, it may actually be the most “sane” thing you can do.

Also, if your organization is going to die, why not go out in a blaze of controversy and courage.  As opposed to a 5 year slow, painful, wheezing death by mediocrity and the status quo.