The 2nd habit of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey) is to begin with the end in mind. I believe this speaks not only to destination, but to intent.
Great leaders not only clearly define their vision (their prospect for a brighter future), but declare their INTENT for how this will be accomplished and WHY it is important.
Using customer satisfaction surveys to demonstrate how this works, positive intent suggests providing customers with a great experience and using the survey as a feedback tool to assess how close the experience came to the expectation—then tweaking the process to raise the level of experience. Negative intent suggests coaching customers as to how to complete the survey so as to simply achieve a higher score. If true customer experience leading to loyalty is the desired outcome then positive intent is the only way to get there.
The concept of a team is to get like-minded people working together to achieve a common goal. In practice it is undeniable that more closely aligned teams achieve more than groups of talented people simply working together. Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, says “if you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”
The first step in getting all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction is for the leader to declare intent. This is why it is so important to have a written vision statement and a written [core] values statement. Writing it down ensures that it is purposeful, defined, clear, actionable, and non-changing. Further, unless it is written it is virtually impossible to execute consistently and hard to keep the team aligned with it.
Your Vision and Values statements should be the first two pages in your Playbook and all of the subsequent pages, detailing the plays (processes), must be in alignment.
Herb Mast is a Leadership Coach and Employee Engagement Specialist. Learn how he can assist you in implementing the principles and concepts presented here.