Heroic intentions and empowering visions

Intentions and visions are not enough to be a good leader. It is what incentives and opportunities your leadership creates that makes the difference.

Photo by gargilas Flickr CC

Do people follow incentives or visions

Is there such a thing as philanthropy? There is much debate if people work for the common good or if even friendly acts are selfish in nature. Classic economics takes a decidedly dark standpoint: There is never enough resources to satisfy everyone’s selfish wishes for personal riches.

Economics strive to observe the effects of decisions taken by societies, to find the effects, incentives and opportunities created by them. Companies are much the same, the policies the leaders create gives rise to incentives that guide peoples behavior.

In small organizations it is easy to sit down around a table and discuss values, but when many are involved an organization tends to behave as stipulated by classic economics and the incentives created drive the performance and productivity.

The need for a vision and story

What is clear is that the really talented people you have in your organization, those that can get another job any day, they work for the persons with at vision. To retain the truly talented you need to be on a mission.

The vision creates hope for a better future, the talented want to participate in the creation of that future. Why? The talented are in essence volunteers, they could work wherever they want and they volunteer to work for you - if you have an empowering vision they stay with you. How can you know if your vision is good enough, simple, check if you have talented people around you or not.

The company with a good story, as a complement to the vision, is a company to whom people can relate. The better the story the more viral the marketing can be, everyone likes a good story. 

A coldhearted analysis

The bottom line is that company success boils down to financial results, or possibly expectations of future gains. The successful leader needs to be both passionate and a coldhearted analyst at the same time.

The warm-hearted leader acts in the present to build a vision driven future on the story of the past. At the same time, the leader must be able learn to communicate to the masses through observing and adjusting the incentives and opportunities created by the policies.

It is a long-standing truth within the Total Quality movement that policies are the biggest restriction to productivity. The strangest thing is that many of the counter-productive policies might be abolished since long, but they live on in the organization anyway.

To observe the effects of implemented and “lingering” policies, the leader needs to find the capacity to observe from a distance, to be like an anthropologist, to see what really gets done and which beliefs guide the decisions taken by the each and every person. Only then can he apply the passionate open and participative management needed to create a better future.