Vision (Part 5)
Sense of direction is of high significance if a company intends to achieve improvement and adaptiveness, though it is missing in most organizations. People should know where they are going and where the organization will be in a long-term perspective.
In other words, to equip every worker with a sense of direction, we need “a vision of a future that does not yet exist; a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices to help advance toward that vision” (Simon Sinek). It guides everyone, as there is always an unobserved area between the status quo and the vision, but since we have the vision, we know where we want to be as a whole, preventing us from going in different directions.
You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.
— Alvin Toffler
Vision gives direction, but not all of them can. For example, Toyota’s earlier vision was “Better cars for more people,” which cannot really guide us. What did it mean by better cars, and what more people mean? So, its clearer vision for the future became “Zero defects, 100 percent value-added, one-piece flow (in sequence) and security for people.” Everybody should know what zero defects are, and making processes value-added is precise as well. What’s the difference between the old and new ones? The main dichotomy is that the latter one describes the condition, not just an abstract idea or a financial goal.
Well, you may think that it is too perfect a vision, therefore, not achievable. But, according to managers inside, they do not worry whether they can achieve that in the future, but what matters is to get as close as possible to the state. Moreover, the vision stays even beyond the tenure of one leader. The vision enables the company to move forward.
Vision gives the direction, but not the precise goals
Vision is too far away. We cannot achieve that in the short-term. So, to make the workers on all levels move in the direction of a vision, we need one more thing in between. We need a Target Condition that gets us closer to the Vision.
Target Condition
Target should be just above the current capabilities and a step forward to the vision. It is clearer than the vision, and it results in a precise description of a condition. Target Condition is something solid, so when it is defined, everyone should act accordingly.
Cost/Benefit Analysis From a Different Perspective
Without a sense of direction, being the vision, departments in the company tend to come up with separate solutions, as mentioned. That, in turn, also leads to the proposals to be evaluated individually, instead of looking at them as a part of a whole. In other words, if a certain project leads to the development of a whole system indirectly, the chances are high that it will be rejected because of the reason that it is costly by itself. But how about the benefits that come from the entire system that outweighs the potential costs?
How many times have you witnessed a potentially interesting though still unformed idea quickly torpedoed and killed with the question, “Is there a financial benefit to that?”
— Mike Rother
As Mark Rother states, CBA should be used not to decide whether to do it or not but to decide how to do it. In other words, traditionally, if CBA analysis shows something as costly, it will be rejected. But in the proposed case, if CBA analysis shows something as costly and if the project enables the company to go a step closer to the vision, then the ways to make it cheaper must be figured out and accepted.
If we take the proposal as a project, then CBA calculates and identifies its cost constraint, and it is perfectly normal for a project to have constraints. The goal is not to stop the project when it exceeds the cost limits but to find out how to accomplish it within that very constraints.
Stay Hungry, Stay Home
One of the fundamental mistakes made by companies is that they pay too much attention to the so-called “standards.” That, in turn, leads to specialists focusing on benchmarking other competitors from around the world who are doing better. Instead, the focus should be directed towards the company's present state, future state, and the obstacles in between. In other words, the questions that should be asked are:
- Where are you at the moment? (Current state);
- Where do you want to be next? (Target Condition);
- What are the hindrances that make you stay where you stay? (Obstacles)
Hence, when one comes across a problem, one should not ask: “how are others doing?” or “what did Apple do?” or “what Samsung would do?” But the whole team should laser in on: “what we actually want? What do we want to achieve? What can we really do next? What is our today’s or week’s plan to get closer to the Target Condition that makes us closer to the Vision!?”
Remember, the ability of your company to be competitive and survive lies not so much in solutions themselves, but in the capability of the people in your organization to understand a situation and develop solutions.
-Mike Rother
