Challenge 2: Do you have a clear and well communicated company vision?

Diagnosis

Every company should have a specific long-term objective in mind. The vision is a direction that your company is aiming at and should guide decisions across your team on daily basis. However, to have chance to reach the vision all team needs to work together toward the common objective. Obviously, that requires that everyone is aware what is the common vision and pays attention to it while acting on behalf of your company. Ignoring broad communication and understanding your vision will not only lead to you pushing your company into direction of your vision by your own, but will also fuel resistance to change and demotivation in your team, due to lack of clear direction/objective for the future.

Positive aspects	Negative aspects
All employees have been informed about company vision	Employees (or not all of them) were informed about company vision.
Company vision is clearly displayed within company environment (e.g., it’s included in e-mail communication, meetings, newsletters, intranet updates, is displayed in company premisses)	The vision is not accessible to employees when they wish to come back to it.
Vision statement is easy to understand for everyone	Employees can’t articulate company vision when asked.
Your managers often underline the vision to their teams, when decisions need to be made	Employees are confused or inconsistent in how they describe company goals.
Vision is realistically used by managers and employees when making day-to-day decisions	Vision is not being reinforced and reminded to employees in day-to-day communication or in an alternative direct way.
All members participate periodically in discussion regarding vision and strategy	Your team is only concerned and driven by short-term goals.
Employees of all levels are engaged in discussions regarding vision and strategy when the topic comes up	When company strategy is adjusted to better fit company vision, employees are resistant to adapt and/or present high dissatisfaction.
People in all functions and areas understand how the vision relates to their job activities	Employees are concerned solely on their own task without attention to general company context and interest in how their work is embedded in general operations.
Employees refer to the vision and strategy in their conversations, decisions, and actions.	Asked for ideas, employees submit ideas and improvements suggestions that are do not relate or support achievement of the vision.
Employees are aware that actions aiming at achieving company vision should be prioritised over alternatives	Employees/managers pursue and/or prioritise actions and projects that are not in line with the company vision and long-term objectives.

1. Fill in the table with your initial assessment regarding those aspects in your company.
2. Afterwards, take up to a month (the length will depend on the size of your team, your relations with team members, and time availability) to intentionally observe your team, engage in conversations regarding the topic and see their understanding and behaviours in the stated areas.
3. Make visits to different teams or employees and try to understand how do they perform/relate to the points above. Depending on the topic you can observe them, engage in direct conversation or ask for feedback of colleagues.
4. At the end of this period invite employees engaged in managerial tasks to discuss also their perception of those issues across your company.

Actions for implementation

If you notice that the negative aspects prevail, you have significant job ahead to do to improve understanding and support for the vision. Your objective should be focused on clearly stating and communicating your vision, as well as ensuring everyone understands what the vision is about and how to use it in the scope of day-to-day operations and decision-making.

One way to start is to organise dedicated workshops for your employees. You can connect it with informal company retreat or other relaxing activity, picnic, casual Friday or any other, depending on your needs and resources. Providing effective informal atmosphere can be of high relevance, especially when your current company culture is not highly supportive to open communication and collaboration across functions and levels.

1. Give participants multiple colours of post it. Each colour should represent one hierarchical level depending on your structure – i.e. 3 – for executive, manager and frontline level.
2. Start from discussing your company vision. Make sure that everyone understands clearly what the main direction is and what your company is aiming at.

Ask your employees to think and write down the related behaviours that they think are highly relevant for achieving the vision. Invite them to think in the categories

• • ‘what the executives should do for the company to make the vision a reality’
  • e.g. we train our employees to think critically
  • ‘what the managers should do for the company to make the vision a reality’
  • e.g. managers – we share best practices across the teams
  • ‘what the frontline employees should do for the company to make the vision a reality’
  • e.g. frontline employees – ‘we constantly ask how can we do it better’

Encourage individual thoughts rather than group thinking and ask them to write their responses on post its according to colours for respective level.

1. Group the sticky notes per level, and place them in a visible space.
2. Ask everyone to read through all included thoughts.
3. Cluster them by similar behaviours.
4. Ask participants to identify one cluster in each level, that they think will contribute most to achieving the vision.
5. Identify 1/2 behaviours at each level for implementation, as a starting point.
6. Build a plan how you will implement it. Make sure everyone is aware what’s the plan and what should be done. (include example?)
7. Schedule a review to verify progress. Put a short-term pressure on implementation – schedule it in max. 30 days.