Finding our way at night depends upon switching on the room light or using a flashlight because what is needed to find our way through is light – in the institutional world, it is referred to as clarity. It is with clarity that leaders light up the path to the staff and employees so that the vision and the mission of the institution is clearly communicated.
Theodore Levitt, the former Editor of the Harvard Business Review, once stated that “Anticipating the future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.” At its first levels, leaders are responsible to communicate the existing vision and mission to employees, and when this process is strategically planned, can even enrich the path to make it clear, smooth, and rewarding.
There is a variety of ways that leaders can deliver a lucid concept of the institution’s brand and identity because this is the first, crucial action step that will determine everything else – conduct, performance, internal and external satisfaction, productivity, all-type profits, and above all, value!
The workplace is a hub of institutions, and regardless of the types, they all serve the same purposes. However, there remain short threads and linings that differentiate one form another. This is simply the identity, that later determines the degree of loyalty and commitment from all stakeholders.
Therefore, creating and maintaining the identity and the integrity of the place are the key points that should drive leaders to start a clear line of sight. At the beginning of the entire process, this is generally easy and attainable, considering the immense excitement and determination to start fresh, strong, and captivating. The certainty behind this lies in the overpowering hope, personified in being persuasive and alluring. Words are usually employed right, ideas are usually portrayed right, and actions are usually selected right. Consequently, the institution finds its way through, guided by that clear line of sight sets to sail.
At more advanced levels, and with no doubt, inevitably, leaders strive later to maintain this identity and integrity. And here lies the tremendous challenge. Will the controlling factors, such as management, skill sets, external policies, finances, and others, dominate and defeat the institution? Can the institution safely operate within changing rules and regulations, growing financial needs, demanding 21st century skills and competencies, economic downturns?
In its simplest form, leaders can create a clear line of sight when they know how to sketch the vision in their minds and successfully transfer it to the minds of others in a mode of engagement. From my personal experience, engagement can be best accomplished when both the mind and the heart are involved. Just like an artist strikes with his paintbrush creating an image on canvas, finishing one painting, then another, and another, until it grows to be a gallery – a collection that involves the vision. Since humans think visually as research says, leaders can sketch their own concepts in pieces, then connect them to form the wider picture.
The same manner can be also seen in the work of fiction authors, who playfully use words and imagery to create captivating scenarios and schemes of actions, triggering full empathy. This is done through setting a landscape in which characters of a story interacts within certain settings and incidents.
Leaders in the same way set this landscape or gallery wide open so that all components are clear. Without this visual strategy, some components remain in the dim side, which as a result leads to misunderstanding and, naturally, disorder in the executions and operations. It is the role of the great, impactful leaders to know how to translate that clear vision to managers, who are expected to embrace and share the general understanding. Later, employees, who are the individuals in charge of the execution processes, both big and small, are expected to understand the translation of that line of sight and provide the service within the same level of zeal and commitment.
However, the Debris?
When do the most intelligent leaders fail to create a line of sight in the institution ?
1. Some leaders commit a serious mistake when they consider the new employees’ knowledge and resourcefulness as those of the senior ones. New employees are better considered as employees with white records, who still need to understand and mark the identity of the institution, along with its regulations in relation to the identity. Joining an experienced team is not the whole thing. The idea that they can “conclude” this line of sight is not right, and not even fair. These new employees will need coaching and training sessions before they are assessed as productive.
2. Stephen C. Harper in one of his books writes
about leaders and managers who are blinded by easy stimulation and protectiveness. These are the managers, who are always alert, waiting to solve problems, making the institution stay safe, but still and stagnant. There is no effective translation of a line of sight because in these cases the line of sight has simply dimmed or disappeared.
3. It is crucial that managers not only understand the present, observing, preparing, short-term planning, and the past, speaking about learning form their past experiences. Predicting what the future will carry, challenges and new paradigms, should be an extension to the leaders’ line of sight, evaluated and refined at any given point. Change is an integral element now in our communities and in all fields. That’s why without future-sightedness leaders will find themselves and their institutions standing at a path to nowhere.
One of the very meaningful explanations related to the significance of creating a line of sight is that the success of a corporation "is determined not by the learning speed of the brightest few, but by the understanding and the execution of the slowest many." Widening the scope of understanding is critical in widening the scope of impact.
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