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| Clear, Compelling Vision | Thoughtful, Intentional Strategy | Purposeful Action | High Expectations | Creative Collaboration | Making the Net Work |
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An important quality of a meaningful vision is an ability to see what isn’t there, to see possibilities with clarity, specificity and a sense of purpose. Having a clear, compelling vision of possibility is of critical importance. All too often, we have clear visions about the immensity and seeming intractability of a particular problem that we are facing. A vision needs to be larger than the problem and it needs to be specific enough and compelling enough to make purposeful action an almost inevitable, natural consequence.
Essentially, a strategy is a plan for moving from a point of origination to a point of destination. Strategy, in its most powerful representation, is driven by “the vision,” not by “the problem.” Indeed, strategy can and should be a natural outgrowth of vision. A clearly articulated vision provides the generative force for multiple, intentional strategies.
Action should be purposeful and efficient. Actions can be thought of as the incremental steps that comprise a strategy. Clear vision and intentional strategies make the identification and placement of action steps pretty straightforward and almost obvious.
Fundamentally, expectation is about knowing what to expect and what to do. Unfortunately, the manner in which expectations are typically framed and discussed trigger associations related to having to meet an external, seemingly arbitrary standard or set of standards. This represents a missed opportunity to activate and harness significant emotional and mental energy. Expectations linked to a purposeful, meaningful, specific vision are themselves purposeful, meaningful, and specific. In particular, specificity makes transparent, explicit, and public what “success” looks like, as well as, ideally, the rules and parameters for getting there. In addition, specificity puts in place the conditions for gauging and celebrating incremental progress and for tapping into another powerful manifestation of expectation. Greater and greater momentum is generated, the closer one gets towards a goal. Success feels increasingly inevitable and expected.
Collaboration is the deepest level of cooperative effort. Collaboration is not a quality that emerges simply as a matter of course. It doesn’t effortlessly flow out of a nominal characterization of a working relationship. Going along to get along doesn’t get at the core nature of collaborative relationships. As well, meaningful collaboration cannot occur in the absence of structures that accommodate the talents and/or passions of collaborating partners. True collaboration results from an intentional process and from thoughtfully constructed structural supports that, as much as possible, allow collaborators to engage the best of who and what they are. A collaborative working relationship is synergistic – the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Collaboration across domains of expertise and experience, across the boundaries of how we see and identify ourselves, though quite challenging, can be particularly rewarding and can, potentially, lead to breakthroughs that would not otherwise occur.
Oftentimes, possibly usually, networks exist nominally without thoughtful, planful consideration about what resources exist within the network (i.e., what types of skills, expertise, materials, etc.), how these resources can be accessed, and, generally, how the network “talks to itself” in a more distributed, ongoing fashion. More often than not, the “net” is in place; what is missing are connection mechanisms and strategies for “making the net work.”