What will propel us toward our vision and what will impede us along the way?

The fourth of five fundamental questions:

This month, A Cause Greater continues our new blog series on the Five Fundamental Questions That Unlock Your Organization’s Future Value. Over the past several months we have taken a deep dive into what many leaders call your core organizational documents: your mission statement (why you exist), core values (behaviors that guide all actions), and your vision for the future (the picture of what you seek to become.)

This month, we will leverage those three organizational documents (and your answers to the first three fundamental questions) and pose fourth question: What will propel us toward our vision and what will impede us along the way?

For those who love to get into the details, answering this question will be right up your alley. With this question we shift from the right side of our brain to the left side — from painting a picture (questions 1, 2, and 3) to figuring out our next steps and building the plan (questions 4 and 5). So let’s get this done!

In my work with organizational leaders, such as CEOs, boards, vice presidents, and their teams, I’ve found the following framework to be a helpful guide, it has three simple dimensions: 

1. 1. 1. 1. Organizational area (such as a department, team, or sector)
         2. What will propel and impede?
         3. The organization's past, present, and future

To ease our understanding and use of this framework, let’s use your local school as an example.

Next, let’s create a table to help us organize our thoughts. In the left-hand column and from top to bottom, make a list of the school’s organizational areas that will be involved in achieving your newly articulated vision, such as faculty professional development, parent engagement, board governance, and fundraising, etc.

Second, across the top, from left to right, write the words Propel Towards and Impede Along the Way. In the space these boxes create, write your answers.

As you consider your answers, be thinking in a third dimension—your organizational story, its past, present, and future.

This dimension holds space for what makes your company unique...kinda like your DNA. See it as a sphere around the table you just created or even the air you breathe when you enter the office.

What from the organization's past and present will aid you as you proceed? What might hold you back? This series of questions is helpful in understanding the systems and behaviors that have developed over time and how they might resist the vision's transformation.

This third dimension is truth serum to the strategic planning and value creation process. This serum can help uncover and name what Lisa Lahey and Bob Kegan call an immunity to change. That part of each of us and the organization's we guide that prioritizes other commitments so that we put up roadblocks to the change we seek. 

This third dimension also holds your organization’s historical narrative, what my friend Ron Mahurin calls your “organizational saga”, which has a huge impact on your ability to bring about the future you seek. Ed Schein also wrote about this saga and what he calls cultural “artifacts” in his 2010 book Organizational Culture and Change.

Depending on your organization’s saga and artifacts, you may need to create space to have courageous conversations about these factors and their impact on your strategic plan. At the end of the day, your organization’s systems and behaviors exist because space has been created for them to exist. Naming them (whether they are neutral, positive, or negative) is key and will begin to unlock the future value you are seeking to develop. Again, it’s like truth serum. 

When you think and act like this on a regular basis, you’ll be able to quickly notice what things don’t align with your mission, core values, and vision and what things do align with them. You’ll be able to name what needs to be addressed and how in order for your vision to become reality. 

As you go through this process you will notice that themes emerge across organizational areas. Pay attention to those themes, because they will begin to point the way forward...like a treasure map.

At that point, you can ask the final question: How will we get there? Your answers to this final question will create a strategic plan that will connect your past and present and begin to create the future value you seek in the months and years to come. 

We will tackle that question with next month’s blog. Until then, if you would like to talk more about what is impeding your organization from thriving, please feel free to call me at 616.516.9870 or email lons@designgroupintl.com.

Or if you would like to schedule a 30-minute discovery call please use this link. I’d be honored to listen and learn more about your organization and its future value!

Walking alongside you,

Lon L. Swartzentruber
CEO, Design Group International
Senior Design Partner