SHARING THE COMPANY VISION AS A LEADER

“Company vision” might be the fluffiest business term thrown around by nearly every business book and article, often used vaguely, without nuance or thoughtfulness.

Yet despite its watered-down usage, “vision” is the most important information for us to communicate across a team. Research indicates that vision was ranked as the number one information people need to share in a team. Given its significance, how to best share a company vision within a team? Before we can answer that, we must start with what company vision exactly is and why it is important.

What is company vision?

A vision is a picture of a better place. You see this picture in your head: It is what you want the world to look like because your product or team exists. In many ways, your team’s vision is your opinion on how you think the world ought to be. A vision answers the question, “What world do you want to create?” Vision is often misconstrued with other business terms, like “mission,” “purpose,” and “values.” But a vision is different from any of those things. A vision is what you want to create. The mission of your team is why you want to get to that vision. Your team’s values are how you want to get to that vision.

A company vision is a statement that outlines the long-term goals and aspirations of an organization. It is a powerful tool that helps define the direction of the company and provides guidance for decision-making. A strong vision statement can inspire and motivate employees, investors, and customers, and can help create a shared sense of purpose and identity.

Why does sharing a vision matter?

Sharing your company vision is important for four reasons:

• Clarifies decisions.

Many leaders strongly emphasise the importance of sharing vision as the ultimate tool for decision making. When the vision is clear, we give our team something explicitly to point to in decision making. The vision is the compass that all decisions are oriented around.

• Decentralizes decisions.

When the vision is shared across the team, each team member can have greater autonomy. Our team now has a shared destination on the map, so the manager doesn’t need to be ordering a series of coordinates instructing everyone how to get there. No more micromanaging. If we are clear about why we do what we do, our vision becomes a filter through which any employee can make decisions that align with who we are and what we’re about. But all of this is predicated on us as leaders regularly sharing this stuff.

• Alignment through disagreements.

A shared vision also helps a team make decisions amidst disagreement. When people argue over how to grow the sales or whether to pursue a project, this shared vision is a uniting force that can override seemingly irreconcilable differences in opinion. It can also give our co-workers the courage to speak up and offer dissenting opinions since they know what the ultimate vision of the team is what they are trying to achieve.

• The greatest motivator for our team.

When shared, a company vision is the most powerful way to motivate a group of people. It gives the team a common place to strive for. When each person clearly sees that same picture of a better place in their own minds’ eye, each person connects to it and feels that pull of motivation to want to create that place.

Here are three thoughts we can consider:

• Over-communicate vision at all-team meetings

The most common way to share company vision is to utilize team meetings. All-team or all-company meetings are an ideal opportunity to have this discussion: Everyone is present, and you are carving out time to talk about broader team and company issues. Regardless of the frequency, the most important thing is that we hold some sort of regular all-staff meeting and that we make a discussion of vision a part of it. Specifically, at these meetings, the team’s vision can be discussed in the following ways:

What is most important is to not make these meetings a progress update. It is found that employees often feel they know what their co-workers are working on, for the most part. Make communicating the vision the focus.

• Leverage the one-on-one meetings.

Communicating the vision isn’t just about broadcasting the vision: “This is the vision, and you must be on board…” Rather, sharing company vision should be a conversation. After all, a vision that is shared across a team is only built from the personal visions of everyone.

To do this, you will want to discuss the team’s vision during one-on-one meetings with the team members. For example, we can ask:

• Do not just talk about vision — codify it.

Talking about company vision during team meetings is great — but we should go beyond that as well. Leaders often present the vision to be something that developed organically and is discussed when needed. Documenting (codifying) the vision is another method on how to share the company vision. In particular, most teams seem to use an internal wiki or Google Docs to document and share the company vision. This often takes the form of a “culture book” or a few pages of their employee handbook.

As fluffy as the word “vision” can be, it can also be powerful when used effectively.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS: IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENT

A Short Story- Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine:

In 1952, polio killed more children than any other communicable disease. Nearly 58,000 people were infected. The situation was on the verge of becoming an epidemic and the country desperately needed a vaccine.

In a small laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, a young researcher named Jonas Salk was working tirelessly to find a cure. (Years later, author Dennis Denenberg would write, “Salk worked sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, for years.”). Despite all his effort, Salk was stuck. His quest for a polio vaccine was meeting a dead end at every turn. Eventually, he decided that he needed a break. Salk left the laboratory and retreated to the quiet hills of central Italy where he stayed at a 13th-century Franciscan monastery known as the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi.

The basilica could not have been more different than the lab. The architecture was a beautiful combination of Romanesque and Gothic styles. White-washed brick covered the expansive exterior and dozens of semi-circular arches surrounded the plazas between buildings. Inside the church, the walls were covered with stunning fresco paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries and natural light poured in from tall windows. It was in this space that Jonas Salk would have the breakthrough discovery that led to the polio vaccine. Years later, he would say…

Today, the discovery that Salk made in that Italian monastery has impacted millions. Polio has been eradicated from nearly every nation in the world. Did inspiration just happen to strike Jonas Salk while he was at the monastery? Or was he right in assuming that the environment impacted his thinking? And perhaps more importantly, what does science say about the connection between our environment and our thoughts and actions? And how can we use this information to live better lives?

The Link Between Brains and Buildings

Researchers have discovered a variety of ways that the buildings we live, work, and play in drive our behavior and our actions. The way we react and respond is often tied to the environment that we find ourselves in. For example, it has long been known that schools with more natural light provide a better learning environment for students and test scores often go up as a result. (Natural light and natural air are known to stimulate productivity in the workplace as well.)

Additionally, buildings with natural elements built into them help reduce stress and calm us down (think of trees inside a mall or a garden in a lobby). Spaces with high ceilings and large rooms promote more expansive and creative thinking.

So what does this link between design and behaviour mean for us? Change Your Environment, Change Your Behaviour. Researchers have shown that any habit you have — good or bad — is often associated with some type of trigger or cue. Recent studies (like this one) have shown that these cues often come from your environment. This is important because most of us live in the same home, go to the same office, and eat in the same rooms day after day. And that means you are constantly surrounded by the same environmental triggers and cues.

If our behavior is often shaped by our environment and we keep working, playing, and living in the same environment, then it’s no wonder that it can be difficult to build new habits. Studies show that it is easier to change our behavior and build new habits when we change our environment.

We are more reliant on environmental triggers than we’d like to think. In one study conducted on “habits vs. intentions,” researchers found that students who transferred to another university were the most likely to change their daily habits. Those habits were easier to change than the control group because they weren’t exposed to familiar external cues.

The mirrors research on the stimulus control theory, or the effect of a stimulus on behaviour shows that techniques involving stimulus control have even been successfully used to help people with insomnia. In short, those who had trouble falling asleep were told to only go to their room and lie in their bed when they were tired. If they couldn’t fall asleep, they were told to get up and change rooms.

Strange advice, but over time, researchers found that by associating the bed with ‘It’s time to go to sleep’ and not with other activities (reading a book, just lying there, etc.), participants were eventually able to quickly fall asleep due to the repeated process: it became almost automatic to fall asleep in their bed because a successful trigger had been created. Perhaps we are more like Pavlov’s dogs than first imagined, it is interesting to see how small cues can greatly impact our behaviour.

If we are struggling to think creatively, then going to a wide open space or moving to a room with more natural light and fresh air might help us solve the problem. (Like it seemingly did for Jonas Salk). Meanwhile, if we need to focus and complete a task, research shows that it’s more beneficial to work in a smaller, more confined room with a lower ceiling (without making ourselves feel claustrophobic, of course).

And perhaps most important, simply moving to a new physical space — whether it’s a different room or halfway around the world — will change the cues that we encounter and thus our thoughts and behaviors. Quite literally, a new environment leads to new ideas.

Putting This Into Practice

In the future, we hope that architects and designers will use the connection between design and behavior to build hospitals where patients heal faster, schools where children learn better, and homes where people live happier. That said, we can start making changes right now. We do not have to be a victim of our environment. We can also be the architect of it. Here is one simple 2-step prescription for altering our environment so that we can stick with good habits and break bad habits:

Our environment can also be tweaked to make certain tasks more difficult or easier to do. Here are some examples…

These are just a few examples, but the point is that shifting our behaviour is much easier when we shift to the right environment. Stanford professor BJ Fogg refers to this approach as “designing for laziness.” In other words, change your environment so that your default or “lazy” decision is a better one.

By designing our environment to encourage the good behaviours and prevent the bad behaviours, we make it far more likely that we’ll stick to long-term change. Our actions today are often a response to the environmental cues that surround us. If we want to change our behaviour, then we have to change those cues.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

ZEN CONCEPT: SHOSHIN – THE BEGINNER’S MIND- A SELF INTROSPECTIVE VIEW

During my time, I have played a variety of sports and games in my life. In that time, I had many different coaches (both professional and seniors) and I began to notice repeating patterns among them.

Coaches tend to come up through a certain system. New coaches will often land their first job as an assistant coach with their alma mater or a team they played with previously. Or the coach is a senior who has been on top of the game for a while. After a few years, the coach will tend to replicate the same drills, follow similar practice schedules, and even yell at their players in a similar fashion as the coaches (or seniors) they learned from. People tend to emulate their mentors.

This phenomenon—our tendencies to repeat the behaviour we are exposed to—extend to nearly everything we learn in life. Our political or religious beliefs are mostly the result of the system we were raised in. Although we may not agree on every issue, our parents political attitudes tend to shape our political attitudes. The way we approach our day-to-day work and life is largely a result of the system we were trained in and the mentors we had along the way. At some point, we all learned to think from someone else. That’s how knowledge is passed down.

Here’s the hard question: Who is to say that the way we originally learned something is the best way? What if we simply learned one way of doing a thing, not the way of doing things?

Consider my sports coaches. Did they actually consider all of the different ways of coaching a team? Or did they simply mimic the methods they had been exposed to? The same could be said of nearly any area in life. Who is to say that the way we originally learned a skill is the best way? Most people think they are experts in a field, but they are really just experts in a particular style.

In this way, we become a slave to our old beliefs without even realizing it. We adopt a philosophy or strategy based on what we have been exposed to without knowing if it’s the optimal way to do things.

There is a concept in Zen Buddhism known as shoshin, which means “beginner’s mind.” Shoshin refers to the idea of letting go of our preconceptions and having an attitude of openness when studying a subject. (**Source: Shoshin – The Beginner’s Mind)

When we are a true beginner, our mind is empty and open. We’re willing to learn and consider all pieces of information, like a child discovering something for the first time. As we develop knowledge and expertise, however, our mind naturally becomes more closed.We tend to think, “I already know how to do this” and we become less open to new information.

There is a danger that comes with expertise. We tend to block the information that disagrees with what we learned previously and yield to the information that confirms our current approach. We think we are learning, but in reality we are steamrolling through information and conversations, waiting until we hear something that matches up with our current philosophy or previous experience, and cherry-picking information to justify our current behaviors and beliefs. Most people don’t want new information, they want validating information.

Another way of understanding this. After reading many books on a certain topic, we know it so well that we can’t just skim through similar books. Most of the information will be repetitive, so we need to read line-by-line to discover the one insight we haven’t heard before.

The problem is that when we are an expert we actually need to pay more attention, not less. Why? Because when we are already familiar with 98 percent of the information on a topic, we need to listen very carefully to pick up on the remaining 2 percent. As adults our prior knowledge blocks us from seeing things anew.

How to Rediscover Your Beginner’s Mind
Here are a few practical ways to rediscover your beginner’s mind and embrace the concept of shoshin.

Let go of the need to add value: . . . . Many people, especially high achievers, have an overwhelming need to provide value to the people around them. On the surface, this sounds like a great thing. But in practice, it can handicap our success because we never have a conversation where we just shut up and listen. If we’re constantly adding value (“You should try this…” or “Let me share something that worked well for me…”) then we kill the ownership that other people feel about their ideas. At the same time, it’s impossible for us to listen to someone else when we’re talking. So, step one is to let go of the need to always contribute. Step back every now and then and just observe and listen.

Let go of the need to win every argument: . . . . . . “Others do not need to lose for me to win.” This is a philosophy that fits well with the idea of shoshin. If we are having a conversation and someone makes a statement that we disagree with, try releasing the urge to correct them. They do not need to lose the argument for us to win. Letting go of the need to prove a point opens up the possibility for us to learn something new. Approach it from a place of curiosity: Isn’t that interesting. They look at this in a totally different way. Even if we are right and they are wrong, it doesn’t matter. We can walk away satisfied even if we do not have the last word in every conversation.

Tell me more about that: . . . . . . . One strategy is to ask someone to, “Tell me more about that.” It doesn’t matter what the topic is, we are simply trying to figure out how things work and open our mind to hearing about the world through someone else’s perspective.

Assume that we are an idiot: . . . . . . . . . In his fantastic book, Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb writes, “I try to remind my group each week that we are all idiots and know nothing, but we have the good fortune of knowing it.” The flaws discussed in this article are simply a product of being human. We all have to learn information from someone and somewhere, so we all have a mentor or a system that guides our thoughts. The key is to realize this influence.We are all idiots, but if you have the privilege of knowing that, then you can start to let go of your preconceptions and approach life with a beginner’s mind.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

THE VALUES AND BELIEFS CHAIN

We are a nation of cricket lovers. The feature that we hit upon straightaway when visiting a cricket stadium for the first time is the grass. Pruned to perfection, it exhibits stripes, diamonds, a checkerboard, or even arches.

Over the years I have gathered many theories about how they’re created: the grass is colored, has different lengths, and so on., but the real reason is a lot naiver. It’s the direction of the blades that tints the grass in various shades. When the sun hits an upright blade, its whole frame reflects the light – rendering it brighter than a blade that points directly towards the sun. Most professionals create the patterns by mowing in different directions. But the astute among them have another trick up their sleeve: they use a simple roller behind their mower to direct the blades with even more force.

And the same way the mowing and rolling directs the grass, our values and beliefs direct our behavior as humans.

What influences our behavior?

On the surface, most of our human behaviors don’t seem rational. But if you follow these impulses down to their roots, everything starts to make sense.

It’s called the Value-Behavior Chain. Our Values influence our beliefs, which determine our attitudes that guide our behavior. That means if a business wants to influence its customers behavior, it must change their attitudes, beliefs or values first.

Values

Values are a measure of worth we attach to something. We can value something very little– meaning basically don’t care. Or we can value someone a lot– going out of our way to do something for that person. Going even further, values are often guide us between what’s good and what’s bad. Universal values are for example happiness, love, freedom, respect, equality and justice. But they can also be as specific as this:

• One of my values is altruism: the fortunate should share their wealth with the less fortunate.

Beliefs

A belief is a feeling that something is true. As a whole, our beliefs represent all the bits of information we collect about people, events and things in life. They don’t necessarily have to be rational or based on facts. They can even be false beliefs and we still cling on to them. They grow stronger the longer we keep them and the more we keep repeating them to ourselves or others. Following our example chain, this could be a belief that’s based on the value above:

• I believe a good company donates some of their profits to charitable causes.

Attitudes

Our attitudes are based on our values (good and bad) and our beliefs (what we know). And they express our relationship towards the world around us. Based on what we value and believe, we like something or dislike it. Or we are ambivalent. An example attitude in our chain might be:

• I like TATA cars because they help people in need. They donated a huge sum of money to The Prime Ministers Relief fund.

Behavior

Our behavior is simply what we do and say–our words and actions. Based on the attitude above, the chain would be concluded through the following behavior:

• Buying TATA Cars.

How are they associated?

Your attitudes are like buoys. They are attached to a chain (your beliefs). And the chain is anchored to the ground (your values). Like the ground, your values will rarely change. Depending on the tide–the circumstances in your life-the buoy will go up and down.

Meaning your attitudes will adapt to what’s happening to you. But they will always depend on your beliefs, as these can be stretched only so far before they break. The only missing piece in the picture is our behavior. Not hard to guess, they are the ships which are guided by the buoys.

As soon as you dive below the surface, people are a lot more rational than they often seem. In fact, their behavior becomes quite clear when you take their motives into account:

• their values: what they find good and not good
• their beliefs: what they know
• Their attitudes: how the relate to their surroundings

And once you know their motives, getting them along becomes as easy as creating a perfectly shaped checkerboard on a cricket field.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa