Business founders and owners are often outstanding visionaries. Being a visionary, however, sometimes comes with blind spots. You may be “the bee’s knees” at casting a vision for your company, yet unknowingly neglect certain employee needs that are vital for your vision to become a reality.
If this assertion surprises you, consider your immediate response to one question about your business.
“What does success look like?”
Your answer undoubtedly relates to the long-term vision for your business, whether that has to do with revenue goals, expansion plans, innovative product lines, or some other “big picture” results. Your image of success is crystal clear in your mind.
You can pinpoint metrics and milestones that will mark your progress. You can’t wait to celebrate when you finally see your vision played out in the real world. Given this clarity about how success looks, how it is measured, and how it is celebrated, you are motivated and engaged and know just what you need to do.
But there is something important to remember: the people who work for you may not think in such “big picture” terms. They may understand and acknowledge the grand vision for the company, but that is not their day-to-day existence and experience. They have a job to do, such as making sales, making calls, or making widgets. That is what consumes their time and attention.
As the business owner and visionary, these daily tasks most likely never cross your mind. (And rightly so, since they aren’t your job.) Yet, these short-term actions make your long-term vision possible. For example, take the accounts payable team. Processing checks to pay vendors probably doesn’t get on the agenda for your leadership meetings. But if the accounts payable team fails to send checks in a timely manner, that can jeopardize key vendor relationships.
Therefore, behind the scenes, Accounts Payable plays an important role in the success or failure of your company vision.
This is the case for every area of your company: each job, team, department, and function plays a role in how your vision succeeds or fails. Therefore, as a leader, doesn’t it make sense to ensure that your employees have clarity about how success looks, how it is measured, and how it is celebrated for their specific roles and responsibilities? Clarity motivates and engages you; in the same way, your employees will become motivated and engaged when they have clarity about the part of the vision that they own.
Here are three ways to provide clarity for your people and, in so doing, help your vision to become reality:
1. Define how success looks. Talk with each department or team about how success looks for them, bearing in mind that success does not refer exclusively to results, but also to actions.
For example, one measure of success for the business development team would be the number of prospects converted into customers each week. But another measure of success could be the number of calls or meetings that were held, because these actions are necessary to keep the pipeline full so that a steady stream of prospects can be converted into customers. With that in mind, there might be a week with no conversions that is nevertheless a great success because of the number of opportunities that entered the pipeline.
2. Determine how success is measured. People appreciate benchmarks, scorecards, and metrics because they offer something concrete to strive for. Having defined how success looks in each area of your company, work with your leaders to put in place practical metrics to measure progress toward and the attainment of success. For instance, call center success could be measured based on the results of post-call customer satisfaction surveys.
3. Decide how success is celebrated. Celebrating short-term wins helps keep people energized because it tells them that what they do is important and that they have done a great job. For example, as the business owner, you can ask your team leaders what successes they have seen in the past week and let them shine a spotlight on their team’s accomplishments. How will you then affirm what has been done and reinforce the part these successes play in reaching the company’s goals? Whatever you decide, enjoy that time of celebration together.
Here’s the bottom line: If you help your people define, measure, and celebrate the success they achieve in delivering on their specific part of the company’s vision, the overall long-term vision will take care of itself. Then you can have the ultimate celebration you are striving for.