Accidental terrorists

You can lead your people for decades through the desert, looking for the promised land, but the people can only help you if you explain how to recognize it when they find it! On a ferry, passengers all reach the goal but cannot participate, plus it requires a huge investment in equipment. To be flexible and effective, like military special forces, clarity of mission is everything.
Photo by David Bailey Flickr CC

Lack of clarity has consequences

While coaching young executives I have consistently seen the effects of blurry vision and vague goals. I have seen very ambitious, well educated, top-notch young talent working hard against the company's interest - being accidental terrorists!

At times, the goal has not even been vague... only it changed, and nobody told the troops, who valiantly continued in the wrong direction.

A new model

To make my point clearer I developed a model that can be used for both discussion and to categorize the people in your organization. Ideally it would be three dimensional with the axes "pro-active effort", "direction of company objectives" and "personal impact on organization". At first, this might seem complex but if will soon become clearer.

Effort vs Direction

If you draw a rectangle and divide it into four fields, with "effort" on the vertical axis and "direction" on the horizontal, the four fields will have the following characteristics:

1. Upper right-hand corner, with all the people working proactively in the direction of the company goals - the Heroes.


2. Lower right-hand corner, holding all the persons passively doing tasks that are in the direction of the company goals - these are the Followers.


3. Lower left-hand corner, with all the persons passively doing tasks that are agains the company interest, the Low-hanging fruit.


4. Upper left-hand corner, collecting the persons diligently and intentionally working against the company interest, the Terrorists!

Some of the Terrorist, are not intentional about working against the company goals - they are the Accidental Terrorists!

Management implications

I suggest you take a hard look at the people you have around you at work, categorize them according to the four groups and then think about the third dimension of "personal impact on organization" individually.

1. Make the grid described above and put in the names of all the persons around you in the organization.


2. Make a circle around the names that have a high impact on the organization.


3. Take a look at the picture and decide who you need to speak to about the company vision already today.


4. Take a harder look and reflect on what the picture say about you as person and manager.
   

A "terrorist" with high impact needs to be treated rapidly and decisively whereas the "low-hanging fruit" group merits an investment in a larger training effort.

How do you see the management implications? What am I missing?