Assets and Aspirations
Every organisation (including a person, which is an organisation of one) has two things: assets and aspirations. Assets are what you have. Aspirations are what you want. Ideally, your assets help you fulfil your aspirations.
Assets can be physical things like: time, money, tools or products, but also more abstract things like: ideas, knowledge, relationships or reputation.
Aspirations can be close or distant. Close are short-term, more certain, operational things you need to do (i.e., tasks). Distant aspirations are long-term, less certain, strategic things you aim to achieve (i.e., goals).
The most distant aspiration is your vision. It is the least certain thing you want that you still believe you can obtain if you begin with the assets you have.
When you fulfil an aspiration it becomes your asset. In a way, you can think of them as one. Assets are things you are 100% certain you can have (because you already do). Aspirations are things you are less than 100% certain you can have (because you still don’t).
In an ideal world, you only have assets that let you fulfil your close aspirations, which will then become the assets that will let you fulfil your more distant aspirations and eventually your vision. In that world, there is a clear connection between everything you have now and everything you want to have in the future.
In the real world, however, you often have wasteful assets that can’t help you fulfil your aspirations. You may also have disconnected aspirations, as well as several concurrent visions. In this world, what you have is often disconnected from what you want.
Leadership is an art of connecting assets to aspirations. A leader removes wasteful assets and disconnected aspirations, leaving only what can be connected.
The main challenge of leadership is, of course, connecting assets to distant aspirations, including the most distant one: your vision. Because more distance means more uncertainty.
Say your aspiration is to have a bicycle. If you have sufficient money, it becomes as certain as a task of going to the store and buying one. But if you lack funds, it becomes a less certain goal. To get it, you need to first place in between a slightly more certain goal of obtaining the funds. If you then look at your assets, you may discover property you can sell, knowledge you can monetise, or a relationship that will help you raise money.
Uncertainty is just another name for complexity. Aspirations are uncertain when too many factors influence whether you will be able to fulfil them, some of which are unpredictable and some unknown. Grand visions are extremely uncertain because connecting them to your assets is extremely complex.
Say your vision is a billion dollar business. The sheer complexity of connecting that vision to your current assets is not something that can fit in your limited human head, regardless of how smart you are. So the aspirations you will need to place in between will include obtaining more brains that can help process parts of that complexity. In other words, an organisation capable of learning how to connect your assets with your extremely distant vision.
Brains mean people, of course, but each person comes with their own assets and aspirations. As a leader, you will be looking for ways to connect a significant portion of these to the aspirations of your organisation. In management speak, this is often called alignment.
Alignment is necessary because people are diverse. Assembling a sufficiently large group of people who share the same aspirations from day one is impossible. However, if your aspirations are compelling and connected to their assets, people will often be willing to adopt them. A vision that is not distant enough will fail to inspire them, but one they feel disconnected from will fail to motivate them. Alignment is art.
Diversity of assets and aspirations doesn’t make alignment easy. However, it is crucial to have it in the long term. Remember, the path to the grand vision is complex and no organisation knows beforehand how to get there. Because an organisation must learn how to connect its assets and aspirations to its vision, having more to choose from increases its chances.
We assess our assets and aspirations all the time, even subconsciously. Knowing what we have and what we want is hard enough. Making a connection between the two is even harder. Nevertheless, it’s a game that none of us can choose not to play. Even if you’re not a fan of todo lists or goals and prefer, say, a systems approach of building useful habits, your assets and aspirations are still there, somewhere in the back of your mind, informing your decisions on which habits to pursue. Which is why assessing them consciously from time to time is not such a bad idea.
