your employees tell me they are afraid of you.”
“Fear can be a good thing. It keeps them on their toes.”
“Fear-motivation does work, Eric, but not very well. It never lasts and you don’t get the best out of people, particularly if you continually shout and threaten them with their jobs.”
“I don’t do that!” Eric shouted, acting out the very thing he just denied.
“Not consciously,” I said empathetically. “But there are things that you do that cause people to fear you.”
“What things . . . ?”
“Like saying, ‘If you want to keep your job, you better not mess up this order.’”
“Chris, my business is not big enough to absorb costly mistakes. I have to make sure that everything runs perfectly.”
“Eric, seeking perfection rather than excellence can be extremely stressful for you and your team.”
“Tell me about it,” said Eric.
After an awkward moment of silence, Eric asked, “What needs to be done, and what do I have to do?”
“Great! We need to start with you. You will need to shift your thinking, which isn’t easy. See yourself as a well-seasoned coach taking over a team that needs rebuilding and training, and you want to get them into a championship playoff.”
“That’s what I’ve always wanted!”
“Good! You have to help your team learn to be a team. Allow your guys to learn from their mistakes. Mistakes are critical coaching platforms that continuously reduce margins of error. Learning from mistakes boosts confidence and ability, and the team is strengthened—all within a positive guided environment. We need to convert your stressed-out employees into a synergized team of focused go-getters willing to work with you toward a shared destiny.”
“Okay, how do we get started?” he asked.
“You begin by sharing your vision with them. What success looks like to you. What you want and how they can be a part of it. Then we will ask them to create their own vision as it relates to their department and specific job. We want the entire team to see themselves being successful in their jobs. We will then meld their collective visions with yours, into one, by conducting a bottom-up, company-wide vision exercise. The feedback from this exercise will be revealing and highly motivational. The goal is to achieve a psychology of shared destiny.”
Many CEOs, presidents, and business owners find themselves in similar situations as Eric. It’s as if they are stuck in a state of stressful inertia: repeating the same mistakes over and over and not knowing how to become unstuck.
The Synergy Strategic Planning Model is a transformational force that shifts thinking and releases stuck brainpower and energy. It moves an organization away from inertia, lethargy, sameness, and the “blame game,” to motivation, growth, and profitability.
Synergy Strategic Planning
The difference between Traditional Strategic Planning and Synergy Strategic Planning is within the depth and breadth of the managerial leadership focus. In Traditional Strategic Planning, the process is completed at the top by the executive team. It is then committed to writing and, in some cases, word-smithed by an advertising agency and then distributed down into the organization with orders to make the change happen.
In the Synergy Strategic Planning Model, the core principle is that organizational effectiveness is achieved through committed leaders who see the organization as a whole, and that change happens quickly through empowered individuals working in teams toward a shared destiny.
When companies decide to make change, they often overlook the important and vital ingredient that will make all the difference—involving their people in the process! They make the mistake of thinking that everyone will see the benefit of the change. They assume that everyone’s goals, aims, and wishes are aligned toward the mission. If you have ever experienced a merger gone wrong or been through any kind of organizational change, you would have undoubtedly experienced the resistance that many people have to change.
You cannot order change, like you order a pizza. Just because the board of directors says it should be so, does not mean that it will be so. Ordering change may work for some people but not for the majority. Making successful change happen in organizations requires a critical mass of agreement and support. That’s one of the key reasons and benefits of Synergy Strategic Planning.
Synergy Strategic Planning is a process of defining a company’s mission, vision, and goals. It includes determining a set of core values, which strengthens the relationships between the leadership team, employees, customers, and suppliers. It is a blueprint of the way in which it chooses to do business. It acts as a business’s moral compass.
Synergy Strategic Planning requires clarity of thought in determining the key factors for the success of a business by knowing and acknowledging its strengths and weaknesses, what opportunities exist, and what may be a threat to achieving success. It takes into consideration core competencies and core offerings, and is a business discipline that calls for strength of leadership, high–performance teamwork, and unshakable determined focus. There is nothing more powerful than a passionate team of people, willingly aligning their goals with the company mission and working toward a shared destiny. It is the energy source of success.
A Psychology of Shared Destiny
A psychology of shared destiny is a power source for growth and profitability. It is a leadership duty and management responsibility to inspire and empower everyone to share in a common vision, a clear set of values, and clearly defined goals. This can be a very difficult thing to accomplish because many leaders are stuck with a false idea of power and control. False power and control can be very intoxicating and hard to let go of because it’s good to be king! To be feared! This way of being the king feeds the ego, the imagined self, and creates an illusion of power.
It takes a real shift in thinking and it takes strength of character and personal confidence in one’s own ability to recognize that true leadership power is earned through honesty, competency, trust, and respect. You cannot lead others if you cannot lead yourself. You have to trust yourself enough to trust others, and in so doing, allow them to perform to their highest potential. This is a more noble way to be king! People love to work for and support secure leaders, and be a part of high energy organizations that afford them the opportunity to grow and develop.
Shared destiny is an essential piece of the success puzzle and a powerful financial engine. Trust between the executive team and the rest of the organization is without question one of the key
