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We often talk about the importance of leaders balancing inherent tensions within organisations, a key one being between short-term responsiveness and long-term purpose, captured by the term “Fix the Vision vs. Flex the Journey”. The importance of this often comes to the fore in large-scale culture change programmes and is a prominent tension in organisations with strong growth strategies. In high-growth sectors, when there’s a lot to go at, it’s easy to rely on being agile and responsive to the opportunities that present themselves in the short-term, rather than being very intentional about where we want to take the organisation to make the vision a reality. We can easily get stuck between on the one hand ‘fixing’ the vision and then not flexing the journey or on the other, get stuck in the journey without clarity on the ultimate purpose and destination. The first step is to help clients identify which of these paths they have become stuck in and develop a more balanced trajectory.
First, it’s important to gain a really honest and accurate picture of how the current tension balance is playing out and impacting upon people. Do people really understand and care about the vision and purpose? Do they feel pulled in too many different directions, lacking clarity about when to flex and when to say no and stick to the course? And even, why its worth the effort? With these insights, leaders have the clarity they need to guide the
development of clear aims, objectives and timescales set out in the vision and purpose.
For many organisations, there can be a troubling misalignment between the emphasis the leaders believe there is on this tension, and the reality experienced by employees. Leaders often feel they have a healthy balance between fix the vision, and flex the journey, but in reality employees are unsure about or unmotivated by the vision or purpose, or the vision and purpose are just seen as superficial window dressing rather than something that actually influences their decisions and actions in reality. This is typically the case when leaders have put a fair amount of effort into shaping and disseminating a vision and values, but the embedding and translation of this into the day-to-day reality of the organisation has fallen short. Why should leaders be concerned about this? Your purpose is the guiding light behind your strategy and every decision made in your organisation. Purpose driven companies outperform the market by 42%; 63% of consumers prefer to purchase from purpose driven brands; Employees at purpose driven companies are 1.4 times more likely to stay with their employer.
Every function in the organisation should have a vested interest in correctly articulating that organisational ‘why’, and using it to guide ‘how we do things around here’.
For leaders: It leads strategic and financial decisions and guides how resources are allocated and systems created.
For employees: It helps attract, engage and retain talent. Employees, like consumers, are increasingly considering a companies purpose when making job decisions.
For customers: Yes, if you get it right and the purpose is authentic, it is a powerful marketing and sales message.
For the community: It should drive governance and sustainability. This in turn should improve ESG performance. Don’t underestimate how the outside world pays attention to this now.
A vision or articulated purpose has no value unless it is leveraged, or ‘nested’. Strong leadership is needed to drive this through on a daily basis, so we support organisations to develop visionary leaders that can navigate people towards that vision. Vision and purpose is something that needs to be talked about and lived, continually. It’s not one and done, vision and purpose are only worth having if they’re embedded.
How do we determine if your organisation is achieving the optimum degree of emphasis or flex between fixing the vision and is flexing the journey? Here are some key questions to ask of yourself and your organisation:
- Does your vision allow for sufficient flex in how you achieve it?
- Do your teams have the autonomy and confidence to be flexible?
- How well does your organisation respond to changing market forces? (Look back to the Covid-19 pandemic for evidence here, how did your organisation flex at this time?)
- Have your senior and mid-level leaders got the right leadership behaviours for your teams to flex the journey or do they have to seek permission and approval for every variation?
Initiate a conversation around the vision and the journey ahead in your next team meeting, and notice the degree to which you are united and agree or simply see things differently and from a wide ranges of lenses on the world. This is the start of the right debate.
To find out more, download our brand-new eBook 'Culture at Breaking Point'.
