A Countermeasure to escalating global change, volatility & leadership chaos
"JFK walked over to the janitor and introduced himself and asked how he was and what he was doing - the janitor responded "I am helping put a man on the moon". A janitor's legacy, a leader's inspiration and the power of a 'Vision'.
The relevance 'Vision' has within the 'Cycle of Change'
One of John F. Kennedy's visons was to be the first country to put a man on the moon, he declared this vision to the world in 1961 and in 1969 Neil Amstrong stepped onto the moon. From the time he set that vision (the 'Now Point' from a CubeNorth perspective) it took 8 years to realise it. Probably a more powerful point as to the effect of John F. Kennedy's race to the moon vision occurred in 1962 when he visited the NASA space centre and noticed a janitor carrying a broom, JFK walked over to the janitor and introduced himself and asked how he was and what he was doing - the janitor responded "I am helping put a man on the moon". A janitor's legacy, a leader's inspiration and the power of a 'Vision'. There were obviously controlled steps taken by individuals, groups, teams and the organisation to realise that vision.
Casting a vision into the future by 8yrs is becoming a relatively rare event in these times. Have you or the team, group or organisation you are a part of had a far reaching, medium term or even a short range vision? How many others can you think of? There are a few obvious ones on the global stage that are recognisable including 'Climate Change' and 'Gender Equality', however the controlled steps towards realising these 'Visions' seem ambiguous and assumed and, whilst they have reached consensus as viable and important issues, they arguably are being left more in the aspiration and obligation basket without holistic strategy and missions being set to deliver in realistic time horizons. This might indicate symptoms of our inevitable globalisation reality that 'Visions' are more than aspirations, they require the additional elements of strategy, missions and leadership.
Ultimately the function of 'Vision' within the 'Cycle of Change' is to provide a point within the cycle that brings relativity, meaning and purpose for the collective efforts, contributions and commitments that people in the form of individuals, teams, groups, organisations and society make and invest of themselves.
Vision is located on the future side of the 'Cycle of Change' timeline (X axis) and is on the high
side of Value line (Y axis) and for obvious reasons it represents the aspirations of individuals and the teams, groups and organisations that they belong to. The location within the 'Cycle of Change' occupied by 'Vision' is the area that, if for mathematical reasons only, is the area that we plot our preferred destination worthy of our holistic efforts. Its reward brings maximum value as determined by us and its pathway is mapped into increments of time that reach out into the future as far as we dare to see. The more clarity and idea we have about Vision, the more we are able to cast it out into the future, which creates room and time to set the strategies aimed to motivate, empower and enable the human pursuit towards achieving this Vision.
From a humanistic point of view the location of 'Vision' within the 'Cycle of Change' often represents hope, inspiration and meaning and is a destination with stepping stones that, for some, define a legacy that one builds and leaves in time for others to reflect upon and progress forward from. How often do teams, groups and organisations consider what their legacy might, could or will be as they set course towards their Vision? Or what effect would the consideration of one's legacy have, when creating a Vision for people to devote their service, efforts and loyalty to?
'Vision' left unattended and to the natural flow of the 'Cycle of Change'.
As we know the 'Cycle of Change' has a natural flow to it and if left unattended, it will run its own course. The effect that the natural flow of the 'Cycle of Change' has on 'Vision' is it can dilute the impact and effectiveness of people's performance in pursuing the strategies and plans associated with Vision. People's motivation, empowerment and ability to self lead themselves towards the ambitions and common goals outlined in Vision Statements are likely to deteriorate into obscurity if 'Vision' plans and strategies are unattended or ignored; which ultimately leads to diminishing returns and failure. If individuals, teams, groups and organisations don't have well- considered and well-constructed 'Visions' with supporting strategy and missions to align to, they will default to traditional, established or incumbent Visions that probably are dated, obsolete and diminishing in relevance.
As world communities continue to globalise with a growing ability to efficiently travel and access world destinations and to conveniently communicate in real time, there is exponentially more and more people contributing to world opinion and drawing conclusions on what is and isn't legitimate. World leadership is struggling to create, design and articulate what the world will look like in 8 years let alone in 50 to 100 years. They are typically in crisis mode attending to current and short range crisis and issues which can become a self-perpetuating cycle. This could be a reason why the United Nations is becoming less effective and relevant than what it was at its inception in 1945. It arguably operates without a declared Vision, but rather to a Charter which constitutes a defined purpose and a set of principles. A charter that dedicated itself to protecting the world, adjudicating its differences and fixing its problems. It now seems it is overwhelmed with differences and problems and its more and more unable to prioritise where to invest its efforts and capacity. It seems to be operating without clarity and knowledge of where the world aspires to go and what it needs to do to get there. An old saying, it seems rudderless or in other words visionless.
It is no coincidence that the 'Cycle of Change' has recognised and identified in its wisdom, that when performance achieves its highest value, higher than what has been declared in its Vision and is sustained part way into the future, then this performance is recognised as 'Operational Excellence'. The individuals, teams, groups and organisations that achieve this level of performance will know from that experience that they will face constant challenges with unknown events and relentless pressures to change. This natural phenomenon (natural flow of the 'Cycle of Change') if left unattended will transform high performance into failure in due course. A considered, pragmatic and determined approach to anticipate and manage this phenomenon, even deploy strategies that see these inevitable challenges and pressures as an opportunity that could further improve performance, as opposed to being a threat to performance; is the defining difference to sustaining Operational Excellence and working with true Vision. One's attitude has a lot to count for.
Taking Control of Vision within the 'Cycle of Change'.
Going back to the 'Cycle of Change' and the position 'Vision' takes within the quadrant (future side of time (X axis) - high side of Value, (Y axis)), mathematically it plays a very important role in achieving High Performance Culture - it is the part that represents the value the teams or organisations are committed to delivering to the shareholder or owner. By design a 'Vision' should be tangible in the form of having targeted strategic and operational plans designed to deliver the objectives of
the 'Vision' in allocated periods of time. In CubeNorth speak (and as represented in Cube 3 of the CubeNorth High Performance model which shadows the 'Cycle of Change') you can see the deliberate milestones in the form of a series of 'S Curve' (for the practitioner) or in other words 'Mission Objectives' (for the people assigned to perform) that motivate, guide and align people and teams to deliver against the assigned objectives.
Stepping back into the humanistic or personal side of a 'Vision; it requires context, perspective and meaning describing the reason why its endeavour is important for an investor's participation and equally, if not more importantly, for its participants as it will likely form part of their legacy to be passed down to future generations. In CubeNorth methodology 'Mission Object Plans' are created to provide a pathway for individuals and teams to accomplish and deliver 'Vision' aspirations ('Working the Line'). If we apply the mathematical mind set to the positioning and relevance of Vision within the 'Cycle of Change', we can observe that Vision and the pathway to it (the line) is both vulnerable to underperformance as well as inviting to overperformance. If the Strategies that accompany 'Mission Objective Plans' represent any underperformance the line will drop in its plane representing lower than expected value over time. Or if 'Mission Objectives' exceed performance targets the line will steepen its plane representing higher value delivered earlier. It is obvious that individuals, teams, groups and organisations need to be motivated, empowered and incentivised to steepen the line and to avoid and mitigate any underperformance that will flatten the plane of the line. CubeNorth refers to the zone above the line as the continuous improvement zone - otherwise known as Operational Excellence. Equally individuals and teams need to be motivated, empowered and incentivised to protect the line from flattening via risk identification, rapid response mitigation and line defence.
The components associated with 'Vision' in the 'cycle of change' are very tangible and provide the evidence of how well performance is going via matrix linked to Mission Objectives and Vision progress. 'Vision' also provides an alignment of like- mindedness and a clarity of mind to guide and direct individuals, teams and groups towards united success. Probably most importantly well constructed 'Vision' has the ability to generate emotion within the individuals, teams and groups that evolve into outputs such as commitment, resolve and determination, confidence, respect, loyalty and honour - which are all essential ingredients of enduring high performance culture.
There are limitations to the controlled approach of the 'Cycle of Change', as there is no evidence that any culture has fully stopped the rotation of the cycle. There are great examples of High Performance Cultures slowing the rotation down such as Toyota (TPS), Mitsubishi, DuPont, the All Blacks, Google, Apple, Shell, etc etc, however all have had their ups and downs and have needed to recover or reinvent themselves at some stage in their history and none of them have been immune to failure. Hindsight provides the best evidence of how sustainable High Performance Culture has been and what impact each of the components within the 'Cycle of Change' have had on the performance of companies, governing bodies and people in general over time. Hindsight tells us that there are no individuals, groups, teams or organisations that have sustained high performance culture for an infinite period of time - can you think of any in hindsight? If no, then there is a pessimistic or cynical view we could apply to this scenario and that is why bother then! This cynical view is ultimately eclipsed by the reality that we know we are finite and our existence is one of a contribution in the form of us as individuals, groups, teams and organisations wanting to make a worthwhile contribution to progress the greater good. 'Vision' is the vehicle that can provide the context and perspective of what the greater good is. If done well, 'Vision' should carry the story of the 'Past', stemming from the contributions of previous generations with their wisdoms and experience of where it is we are heading; what is right and worth our ongoing commitment and pursuit; what is wrong and unacceptable needing the courage to stop; and what we have learnt that should make us better. When 'Vision' carries the perspective of the 'Past' it can then be written with the context of describing what the greater good looks like well out into the future and in a way that gives the next generation of individuals, groups, teams and organisations the motivation, confidence and courage to dedicate the best of themselves to it. Without 'Vision' or if it is poorly constructed, it will invite and propagate an environment of pessimism, cynicism, sarcasm and negativity which will accelerate poor performance and failure for obvious reasons. In High Performance Culture, 'Vision' transports us away from the dominance of pessimism, cynicism, sarcasm and negativity and replaces it with a dominance of positivity, confidence, courage and an attitude to contribute and make a difference.
Why does the 'Now Story' need 'Vision'.
'Now' is the point where we perform and work from, it is the live version of time. In the 'Cycle of Change' it is where the x and y axis intersect, representing our current reality. Time is stamped with a date and Value is stamped with a number or measure that represents if we are on track with our plans or off track. If we look no further than this reality we are more or less treading time waiting to see what it brings us next, in other words we are subject to the natural flow of the 'Cycle of Change'.
In High Performance Culture we aim to influence the 'Cycle of Change' by being in control of what we are doing now, and at the same time capturing the relevant aspects of our past and constructing what we want to achieve in the future. As we acknowledge the 'cycle of change' model and the intersection of the x and y axis we can see it represents the point of 'Now' and with that it becomes obvious that we are compelled and obliged to reflect on the past and contemplate the future by looking to both sides of the line. Ignoring the 'Past' doesn't make it any less significant, it makes us ignorant, naïve and vulnerable and not contemplating the 'Future' makes us careless, arrogant and vulnerable. Maybe traces of these behaviours and traits at a macro level of our global organisation have visited us in recent times, with pandemics (not the first one) and it could be argued we were slow to react. Not for the first time, a new war to exercise control and dominance of a particular view of life has been activated, and we seem surprised. It is these types of examples that we, at a global level, appear to be very shallow in our reflection of the past and our consideration of the future is very constrained and narrow.
If we were to plot our performance as a Global Organisation on the 'Cycle of Change' model we would have put the marker within the 'Diminishing Returns' heading to 'Failure' category, certainly not our finest performance and certainly not High Performance Culture. The recent era of globalisation and digitisation accelerating since the 1990s not only has brought the world closer together geographically, it has centralised and magnified opinion, activated real time decision making and intensified situational reaction; which have all had a cumulative effect of increasing the rotation speed of the 'Cycle of Change'. World leadership seams to be struggling with this acceleration and are struggling to unite or mitigate the escalating volatility of worldly issues, challenges and change. If it is an accurate assessment of the 'Cycle of Change', that the Global Organisation and its collective leadership is accurately plotted at Diminishing Returns heading toward a level of Failure, we would see leadership behaviour compressing more and more to just dealing with 'Now', remembering and using less and less of the past and losing sight of any Vision they have had for the future. These symptoms seem to line up with the assessment, indicating that the world is defaulting more and more to the natural flow of the 'Cycle of Change' and leadership is losing the inclination and ability to take back control of it.
High Performance Culture is a result of managing the 'Cycle of Change' well and for a sustained period of time. In order to give clarity of what needs to be done to manage the 'Cycle of Change' leaders need to stand (virtually) on the 'Now Point' of the cycle and form a view of what needs to be done to manage the cycle. This can only be achieved by assessing the merits of the past, consolidating what is important and essential to take from the past into the future and then to formulate a Vision that represents the expectations, aspirations and inspiration of the community they represent. A Vision is the culmination of all the learnings and lessons, the victories and failures, the discoveries and innovations, the intuition and experiences that we have compiled that provide people and teams with the ability, skill, courage and belief that they can do better and achieve more within a reasonable period of time. A convincing Vision is an essential component of the 'Now Story' that motivates and enables individuals, teams, groups and organisations to sustainably achieve High Performance Culture.
Conclusion
'Vision' is the vehicle that can provide the context and perspective of what the greater good is. If done well, 'Vision' should carry the story of the 'Past', stemming from the contributions of previous generations with their wisdom and experience of where it is we are heading; what is right and worth our ongoing commitment and pursuit; what is wrong and unacceptable needing the courage to stop; and what we have learnt that should make us better.
When 'Vision' carries the perspective of the 'Past', it can then be written with the context of describing what the greater good looks like well out into the future and in a way that gives the next generation of individuals, groups, teams and organisations the motivation, confidence and courage to dedicate the best of themselves to it.
Without 'Vision' or if it is poorly constructed, it will invite and propagate an environment of pessimism, cynicism, sarcasm, and negativity which will accelerate poor performance and failure for obvious reasons.
In High-Performance Culture, 'Vision' transports us away from the dominance of pessimism, cynicism, sarcasm and negativity and replaces it with a dominance of positivity, confidence, courage and an attitude to contribute and make a difference.
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