Remember Tom Cruise’s military lawyer responding to Jack Nicholson’s Colonel Jessep in the film A Few Good Men? They were talking about following orders and the murky unwritten laws of military procedure in this classic from the early nineties. But, I wonder how many crystal clear responses you’d get if you asked your staff if they understood your firm’s purpose or your company’s vision. Not many is my guess.

This is not surprising as research suggest only about 5% of organisations can claim their employees genuinely understand the company’s vision and strategy. But what’s worse is the seemingly tacit agreement on the behalf of many leaders who seem to think this is ok and that they’ll still achieve and reach their goals/targets/dreams regardless!

Well you might be one of the lucky leaders and do just that but just think how much luckier you could be if you had all your team focused on the same destination with a shared vision, clear goals and an understood purpose. In fact just think how much more successful you could be if when you asked your team, “Are we clear?” they all responded with one voice “Crystal”, we’ll drop the Sir.

Read the rest of this entry »