Brooklyn's Progress
February/March 2007

BY LISA A. BING

As we look out on a new year, many of us are thinking about what we want to accomplish and where we want to take our businesses next. We are setting not only goals (hire two new sales people, reduce costs by 7%), but more significantly we’re working on setting new directions or visions for our businesses and our teams.

Are you looking to expand the product line, expand into new geographic territories, phase out certain products or services, move into new markets or even prepare to ready the company for a sale down the line? Whatever the direction or vision, when it is clear to us where we are headed, it becomes so much easier to attract the right resources and spot opportunities that help us get there. Laser sharp visions also serve to eliminate distractions that could potentially derail us at worst or slow us down at best.

Most of us are not on this road alone. There are a host of others, employees, partners, vendors, boards, who are impacted in some way by our decisions. And we need these folks to carry out the day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month activities that must happen in order to realize our visions.

And here’s where it gets tricky. Frustrations build when others do not act in accordance with our visions. More often than not we’re working with committed, capable people, so why don’t they get it?

Here are five factors that can blur the most extraordinary visions.

1. The vision is never actually articulated. Recently I talked with a successful business owner who wants to grow from a $2M operation to $10M, which means his sales team needs to employ more sophisticated selling strategies. He approached me to help “motivate” his sales team. What we discovered is that the vision has not been articulated to the sales team. So they are operating business as usual as his frustration builds.
2. In the interest of inclusion, a leader looks to his/her team to set direction. One board of highly technical leaders called on me because they found themselves stuck. Decision-making was slow and it was increasingly difficult to get things done. During a two-day leadership retreat, I had to coerce the board chair before he would set forth his vision. He was concerned about stifling others’ perspectives. In reality, the board was expecting him to set the direction and once he did, movement was rapid, frustrations eased and commitment to action was ignited.
3. Priority overload. The saying goes that if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. Once there are more than two or three (ok, maybe four) priorities, focus is diluted and it becomes difficult for others to know what’s really important. This leads to another reason that visions go unrealized, which is a topic for another time, but an inability to say no to projects, that although worthwhile and interesting projects, do not fit with the current vision is a huge de-railer. One client distributes bolts used in major construction projects, bolts of all kinds, and some very specialized (e.g. a special security bolt used in homeland security, prisons and in subways), but just bolts nonetheless. I asked him if he had electrical plates, he laughed and said no, we do bolts. That’s focused and clear.
4. The vision represents only your perspective. This may seem to contradict an earlier point that teams expect the leader to set direction. This does not mean that the perspectives and input of others should not be considered. In fact quite the contrary. As brilliant as you are, you cannot see every opportunity and we are all limited in some way by our own experience. Different perspectives help you see new opportunities as well as potential blind spots. One colleague is now pursuing a completely new business model based on input from a partner, who by the way is not an expert in his business. Within a month he was negotiating a lucrative contract in a market that he had not considered even a year ago.
5. The vision is poorly communicated. A hallmark of strong leadership is effective communication. Too often frustrations build because a memo was sent or a meeting was held and even worse an e-mail was sent announcing the new direction and the expected results are not being realized. Research has shown that to effectively communicate a message takes eight different times in eight different ways. Some of you are now thinking, “who has time for that?!”  To which I suggest, who has time not to? Just think of all the time you’re spending now re-doing work, trying to recover missed opportunities and fixing relationships damaged by misunderstandings, not to mention the angst and frustration you experience as a result of the inability to quickly achieve the results you’re after.

So whether your direction this year is up, over or out, consider not only your perspective, but also who needs to be on board and how you will engage them in ways that can make for the smoothest ride.

Lisa A. Bing is President of Bing Consulting Group, Inc.  You may reach Ms. Bing by phone at 718-398-8516, via email at lbing@bingconsulting.biz or visit her Web page at www.ibrooklyn.com/bingconsulting.