LEADERSHIP STRATEGY: INTEGRATE VISION AND PLANNING
succeed by balancing inspiration and discipline
Long range planning is at best a waste of time and at worst dangerous. Visioning by contrast, has become essential to the process of creating plans that work:
- Planning is results oriented— performance.
- Visioning is innovative —energy and creativity.
- Visioning and planning together— breakthrough goals and sustained performance.
by LSI managong partner Art McNeil
The odds of success increase when your forward thinking integrates visioning and planning.
Visioning engages the wonder, creativity, and flexibility of the child that still resides within everybody—albeit buried under layer upon layer of “shoulds and how tos” (let’s call this dimension the pirate). Pirates influence morale (good or bad) creativity (unharnessed creativity may be focused on how to; get out of having to produce, CYA, and in extreme cases even theft and sabotage.
Planning by contrast, applies the analytical skills of a disciplined mind using logic, facts, process, metrics, and supervision. Planning brings into play experience and knowledge (we’ll call this dimension of people “the admiral”. Both reside in each individual. Typically each person will have a dominant dimension.
The 5 year old (Pirate) influences corporate energy—the experienced and knowledgeable adult (Admiral) influences critical thinking, discipline, and accountability
How visioning and planning should work together
Imagine yourself (both dimensions) standing in the foothills facing the Rocky mountains. The pirate imagines standing at the top and feeling like “king of the world”. The pirate views the mountains as magical and mysterious. To the admiral, the mountain appears to be a long way off and almost impregnable.
In this example the pirate wins (my admiral has no answer as to why) and the “whole person” decides to climb the mountain. He looks through his binoculars and notices a clump of trees several miles away but in the direction of the mountains. Because the trees are close, he notes potential pitfalls and traps and plans to overcome obstacles. The pirate is enthusiastically executing instructions because there is movement towards those wondrous mountains. The admiral is confident, because there is a logical and attainable short term goal (the trees). Both the admiral and pirate are fully involved as the whole person moves forward. Once the trees are reached, the pirate stares at the mountains and imagines the exhilaration of reaching the top (vision). While this is going on the Admiral is busy planning the next leg of the journey. As he refocuses hi binoculars, he notices obstacles that were beyond the initial scan.
The lesson
Visioning moves people towards an inspiring possibility. It fosters will to win and desire to belong. Planning injects process and discipline. It establishes commitment and accountability to reach specific goals along the way. The whole person (pirate and admiral) must be engaged.
This post is sponsored by the E book Secure Corporate viability by Creating *Transferable Wealth and wisdom: how to make your compnay more profitable and valuable
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