Get a methodology for defining your leadership team's purpose and vision
This article introduces a simple and easy-to-use model that helps the leadership team define a clear purpose and vision for the group - thereby increasing the group's effectiveness. The method can also be used with employee groups.
The power of a clear purpose
Imagine a cockpit with 8 pilots who haven't agreed exactly where they want to fly to. Collaboration is obviously going to be difficult here, characterized by different understandings of goals and priorities. This situation often characterizes leadership teams that don't have a clear shared purpose and vision. Research clearly shows that a leadership team that has a clear purpose and shared vision is far more effective at driving results in the organization (Bang, Midelfart, Molly-Søholm and Elmholdt, 2015).
Definition of purpose
A purpose describes the overall aim of the group or team. I.e. "What are we here for as a group? What overall results do we want to create?". The purpose must capture the group's overall goal picture at a general level, and experience shows that the management team can often easily develop a more effective, strategic and targeted common practice based on this purpose and goal picture.
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The creation of a clear purpose
In our experience, it's best to let the management team define its specific goals and initiatives in each of the managers' areas of responsibility and from there clarify the group's vision; and then formulate the purpose based on the vision.
If you go the other way and start with the formulation of purpose and move down through the model, our experience is that it often results in a slightly too general value discussion that has limited value for both the group's daily work and long-term development. The first step is to create a shared visual goal.
1. Create a visual and shared vision
Here we need to use a "visual scaffold" to clarify and frame the elements that need to be defined. A visual scaffold is a drawn model of the areas that need to be addressed in a dialog in the group and where common understandings and agreements need to be concluded. This provides a common communicative starting point and focal point for the work process in the management team. Below is a visual scaffolding for the management team's target image. The row of vertical columns shows the responsibilities of the leaders in the group. The triangle illustrates the shared goals and efforts of the leadership team. The task now is for the group or team to map out the model for the group or team. What does it look like, how many columns are there and who is responsible for what?
2. Completing the target image
The next step is to fill in the target image:
a. The group defines and writes down on cardboard cards what they consider to be the most important goals and actions they need to achieve and implement over the next two to three years - in their own area of responsibility. They clarify with themselves "Which of the listed actions and goals can only succeed if they are well coordinated, supported or aligned in the leadership team?"
b. Group members present their goals and initiatives to the rest of the group and place the cardboard cards in the given vertical columns. The goals and initiatives that will only succeed if they are well-coordinated, supported or aligned by the leadership team are moved up into the triangle. In our experience, group and team members move a third of their goals and initiatives to the team level in this phase.
c. Next, members reflect on: "What other goals or initiatives are there for the group that come from elsewhere in the organization, e.g. top management?". These should also be placed in the management team's goal images - i.e. in the "roof" of the scaffolding.
This creates a common goal picture where it is clear what the management team has set out to achieve - in concrete terms. From there, work can continue by dividing the group's goal picture into some general categories and further orienting the group or team towards a clear and concrete purpose.
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3. Determining the purpose
Members now define their overall goal categories by reflecting on the question: "What categories emerge when we group the goals into categories?". From research, we know that the goals of leadership teams often fall into the following categories: Decision and control; coordination; information; sparring; monitoring; and remembrance and development.
An example of the product of this reflection is a management team that defined that it wanted to:
- Develop joint strategies, initiatives and implement them
- Coordinate joint projects, allocate resources and clarify the division of labor between participants
- Continuously improve - becoming stronger and more capable as a leadership team
- Follow up on each member's goals in their area of responsibility and help and develop each other to achieve the goals
- Ensure information on important cross-cutting issues.
If the leadership team wants to set the bar high for its purpose work, it can look to the research on effective leadership teams. There is some consensus that a leadership team exists to create results within the following three categories (Bang et al., 2015):
- Creating results in the organization - subcategories here can be: Strategy development and implementation; optimal resource allocation and structuring; optimization of cross-functional work; joint results in staff development, etc.
- Make the group better
- Make the individual better in their own role/leadership
This model provides a tool and process for defining a shared vision and purpose - a crucial step towards increasing effectiveness as a leadership or employee team.
Read more about how we work with leadership development in LEAD and find specific cases here.
