Leader! Sell Your Vision!
As a leader, to lead you must have a vision. And you must sell it so that you can lead! How do you sell it?
During my walk today, I was listening today to the Masters of Scale podcast. Their sponsor, Capital One, provides stories as advertisements, which are very effective in getting the point across. I’m a customer and don’t need anything else, but if I did I would keep them in mind.
Anyhow, today’s advertisement had an executive who wanted to sell her vision, only to realize that the organization was not ready to hear, let alone accept the vision. That triggered some thoughts in my mind:
- Do we as leaders, sometimes, try to sell things before their time?
- If that’s the case, what do we do to get the organization ready?
- And, once ready, what do we do to sell it?
- Finally, how do we measure success?
One of the roles I enjoy is scanning the horizon for technologies and approaches that could help my organization and my clients. Is there a better way or tool to do things? For example, I find LLMs (Large Language Model) AI tools helpful to research and point directions. Will they replace me? Not in the short term and maybe never. But they are powerful tools as they can do massive research quickly and help identify things you may have forgotten. But I need to validate the results, as they could hallucinate!
To sell the idea/vision, I need to assess the readiness of the organization to accept this new approach. Are they open to new approaches or are they more of the “we’ve always done it this way” type of organization? Are there others introducing ideas that we could learn from? Is it a learning organization, always looking to grow and learn from others? What has worked before? Can I apply these successful approaches?
Note that involving the team and others who will be impacted by the vision can be extremely helpful when you actually sell it. It’s not just your vision. Is everyone else’s vision too. And they will speak up about it so you are not the only one selling.
A short story
An organization may never be ready, but a smaller group may get it, either because they buy in or because you lead them in such a way that they follow. For example, in the 1990s, before Agile, I led the Intel Inside® Program system development effort. Those were still the days of waterfall and mainframes. Knowing the critical needs my customers had, I needed to figure out a faster approach to deliver value. We started with Information Engineering (data and process modeling) to get us going. My manager and main customer (same person) wanted everything done in three months. My response: “yes, ma’am, but it won’t happen. The simplest thing with our current approach takes three months but we don’t even know what this thing is.” Needless to say she wasn’t happy but I had stated the truth.
I worked with my peers on the business side to identify what would be the minimum value they could use and set the team to deliver that value. We convinced our mutual manager that this was the best approach. The recommendation, though, was not from technology but from the business! Note that this is another truth about visions: they do not have to be delivered all at one time! They can be built in pieces, which has the advantage of delivering value while getting feedback that allows the team and you to adjust.
Our contractor started developing and delivering pieces quickly in a client/server environment. We quickly gravitated to what would be called Agile today. I set the original vision of using Information Engineering, the contractor delivered the Agile approach, I defended our team from the establishment by arguing we could deliver value much more quickly and doing just saw. Hard to argue with success!
I did not try to change everyone’s mind. I did only those in my team and other groups that would be impacted. So, I sold the vision in a limited fashion.
A partial approach
A partial approach to selling the vision is what ChatGPT told me today (remember, I use it for research. My query: “As a leader, I need to sell my vision to my team and to management. What five things should I think about?” I also use it sometimes to generate pictures, like in this case).
It told me to consider:
- Clarity of purpose
- Alignment with Goals
- Engagement and Involvement
- Clear Path Forward
- Inspiration and Motivation
All of these are very important but may not be sufficient. If the organization is not ready then the sale may not happen. If embedded interests resist, then the sale may not happen.
Other things to consider
Some other things I would consider besides the organization’s readiness and the items above would be:
- Why — why is this vision necessary?
- Who are the stakeholders and how do we engage them to secure their support or, at worse, minimize opposition.
- WIIFM — What’s In It For Me. Actually for the WIIFS — What’s In It For the Stakeholders. What do they get?
- And the Six Domains of Leadership™ model (below is not a quote but Medium doesn’t have indented bullets):
Do you have the credibility (Personal Leadership) with your team and stakeholders? If not, you need it before anyone will listen to you.
Do they trust you (Relational Leadership)? Do you have good relationships with all the stakeholders, including your team members?
Do they have a sense of community (Contextual Leadership) of who the team is and how they can best work together?
Do they have high aspirations (Inspirational Leadership) that will encourage them to not just follow the vision but enhance it with their contributions and initiatives?
Do they have the initiative (Supportive Leadership) because they feel secure and have the resources they need?
Are they good stewards (Responsible Leadership) of the organization’s resources? Can they balance the short and long term interests and the vision’s impact on them?
A final thought
Finally, what is your communications plan to sell the vision? Will you just start talking about it in meetings or will you carefully define an approach that sets the stage, explains the vision, the benefits, how to approach it, etc.?
Taking these items into consideration, you’ll be ready to sell your vision. Do remember, though, your mileage may vary.
Some resources
For details on the Six Domains of Leadership, go to https://deltaleadership.com.
You may also want to refer to some of my articles where I talk about the Six Domains of Leadership, such as:
- Situational Leadership and the Six Domains of Leadership
- Situational Leadership — Leveraging SDL’s Personal Leadership
- Helping a “Storming” Team
Vision articles:
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