Where will a vision take you?

Nowhere.

Visions are what Sherlock Holmes had when he was smoking opium; they’re what dance in kids heads before Christmas; they’re what the religious see on slices of bread and potato chips.

Visions come in two flavors — hopeful and executable.

Both may have a plan, but the first is missing a key ingredient.

Call it grit (currently popular term), tenacity or moxie.

Whichever you use, it’s the difference between

• rosy predictions, high hopes and self-deluding prophesies

and

• a founder and team that is well-planned, efficient, business-smart and fearless in the face of obstacles.

Executable means more than writing great code — in spite of tech people’s generally dismissive attitude to skills such as marketing, sales and even fiscal controls.

In the best case, executable means having a team member with cradle to grave product experience and another familiar with the initial market and growth markets — or at least a team that listens to advisors who do.

In short, a truly executable is vision is a complete business, with all the moving parts having equal value.

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about leadership that included a quote from the main character, a forensic anthropologist, in the TV show Bones.

Anthropology tells us that the Alpha male is the one with the crown, the most shiny baubles, the fanciest plumage, but I learned that the real alpha male is often in the shadows because he is busy shining the light on others.

Founders are typically alphas, whether male or female.

With that in mind I have a simple question to ask you.

Which kind of alpha are you?

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There is a wonderful post by Kent Lineback at HBR called The Leadership Learning Moment That Wasn’t. In it he tells of blowing a great opportunity because he couldn’t get the other executives in the company to buy into his vision.

“What do you think is going on? I made an important point and everybody yawned and moved on.”
“It was an important point,” he [the consultant] said, “but you didn’t build any bridges.”

Lineback goes on to say that he thought long and hard about the consultant’s words and realized he was right.

“I didn’t build bridges. I didn’t reach out and connect with others on their terms. I talked at them. I had a solution, a beautiful vision. I knew the answer, and I spent my time telling everyone what it was and what the company had to do.

But that didn’t change anything.

I knew he was right. I knew I should do what he said. But I couldn’t debase my perfect vision by turning it into a free-for-all idea jam. Better to stay pure and fall on my sword, a martyr.”

That is one of the great problems of leadership visions, they are the property of one person; one person who will do almost anything to sell the vision—anything except share and modify it.

Leadership visions happen at all levels of a company from the CEO down to the newest supervisor.

It’s a side effect of drinking the leadership Kool-Aid, so you might want to think twice before indulging your thirst.

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There is much talk about building winning teams and how to lead them and much of that centers on “influence” and “visions.”

The ledgendary Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, an expert on winning teams, provided a far simpler approach that you can be implement in a matter of seconds.

The only caveat is that once started it must be followed exactly and whole-heartedly.

“If anything goes bad, I did it.
If anything goes semi-good, we did it.
If anything goes really good, then you did it.
That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”

If more “leaders” followed this path we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Do you have the courage to implement Bryant’s approach?

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Have you ever thought about what leadership sounds like?

Real leadership makes no noise.

Real leadership goes quietly about its tasks.

Real leadership doesn’t announce itself or blather on about what it plans to do in the future.

Real leadership isn’t a pied piper that mesmerizes you to follow along on its journey.

Real leadership happens every day all around you; it’s done by your colleagues, those you pass on the street and the people in your home.

So the next time you hear leadership be suspicious, be very suspicious.

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Although he may not realize it, web developer Tim Knight speaks for the vast majority of the global workforce in a post entitled Stop Leading Your Team to The Destination, Give Them The Map.

He eloquently explains why leaders who proclaim their visions and then hoard the details have far less chance of success as opposed to those that are introduced, explained, clarified and then embedded in the corporate culture.

Today’s workforce is damn smart and leadagers forget that at their own peril.

One caveat. “Profit” isn’t a valid vision, especially when building it into a culture creates an overarching need to achieve it that transcends sensible, moral, ethical and even legal bounds as so recently happened.

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