David Schmaltz On Choosing Whether To Have A Shared Vision

David Schmaltz questions the value of a Shared Vision.

• Can we imagine an instance where the need for a shared vision might inhibit progress? Easily. A local Economic Development group milled around for two years failing to get the proper constituency to agree on a vision for their project. Why? Well, the first phase of their economic development methodology clearly said that a shared vision needed to come before anything else. And so it did.... Can any city guide itself (Urban Planning) without a comprehensive future vision? If the alternative fully acknowledges that the current perspective allows them to see only the horizon and not the destination, that they are truly blind to what their future might be, they can certainly guide themselves to a satisfying destination. If they believe that they must share a vision to succeed, it seems that they could only fail...

  • This reminds me of the Coalition ideas from 2003-12-11-SchumanSharedPurpose. In some Context-s, esp. Public Policy, it's unlikely you can come up with a Shared Vision. To the extent different visions aren't inherently contradictory (Positive Sum Game), it might be best to identify sub-groups with less intensive cooperation between them (Federalism). When this is not possible, you often end up with Government Failure.

  • But should have expect such challenges in a SmallCo/Start Up? I'd say that's a barrier to success.

    • An earlier piece of David's 2003-05-24-SchmaltzProjCommunity notes that individuals have their own agendas, that's unavoidable and should be acknowledge/embraced. But I think that makes it more important to have a Shared Mission to bring some sort of Convergence to all those individual Mission-s.

      • But what's the relationship between Shared Vision and Shared Mission? Can you have one without the other? Or maybe you can just have Shared Goal-s without a Shared Mission? One post of David's links to a table he made of mismatches often made in Goal Setting.

  • At the BigCo/Enterprise level (at least where there are multiple Business Unit-s), there's more independent action by various groups. You get less Leverage as a Trade-Off for greater local Agency. Note that recent changes in Product Development processes have found benefits from increasing integration (of course, that's within a Business Unit, assuming you organize that way).

• One critically important perspective that can get lost in envisioning is a clear understanding of the way things are.

  • I agree that the stronger the buy-in to a particular Model, the harder it is to recognize when the model isn't working. Although I think that this is more of a risk at the Business Strategy level (on how to achieve the Vision).

  • There's also a risk of having an ineffective vision in the first place. Having discussions about the basis for the vision, considering alternative visions, etc. seems like a good process to me. And then communicating and documenting the details of that discussion so that other who join later (or forget) can see what's been discussed. And you can re-discuss periodically without necessarily repeating some of the same exact points.

• Vision is not an imperative, but a choice. Where the community quite naturally shares a common perspective, shared vision might be easily achievable. Who's watching for the blind side then? When the community sees the world in a variety of ways, a common vision can be difficult to construct and can limit perspective (Group-Think), resulting in the most tenacious blindness - where the blind are convinced that they can see when they cannot... Feet on the street will move you forward. The unanticipated perspectives you meet on the way will tell you when you actually arrive.

Further discussion on this thread is available.

• David clarifies I would never argue against creating Shared Vision, as I think it one of the primary success factors on any project. The original piece tried to suggest that it's a choice, not applicable to every situation.

• David points to some pointers he made years back on the Shared Language appropriate in Goal Setting.

Andy Singleton pulls some thoughts from Douglas Smith's WisdomOfTeams: He observes that high performance teams are not necessarily composed of people who like each other. Instead, they are composed of people who share the same goal (Shared Goal). In pursuing the goal, they can achieve high performance even if they might be described as bad team players. Winning at work is great positive FeedBack to keep them going and support their relationships.