Barry Eustance argues leaders don't need to have a vision first. Instead, they spark a collaborative process where employees co-create it. A small coalition drafts the vision, then a volunteer network across the organization refines and amplifies it, making it collectively owned rather than leader-imposed.
It just popped in as you— as we were speaking, because there's a school of thought, and I think it's taught at the MBA level, that a leader should have the vision. No, I deliberately use the word have to make it sound as if the leader either is born with it, which some people talk about, or they have a mountaintop experience they go somewhere and they see something and it becomes the vision. And then their job in their mind is to come back and sell it to everybody else. And then there's an, I don't have a vision by myself. I can create a vision with my colleagues, my employees, my superiors, everyone in my ecosystem. So I can spark the process of creating a vision. And at the end of the process, it's our vision. It's not mine. I embrace it, but I'm not the originator. I'm not the holder. I'm not the biggest proponent necessarily because the process that we use to get to it really did start from nothing and I was only a participant. That approach is one that happens sometimes in strategic planning activities, but not always. Can you speak to the, the benefit of doing it that way versus doing it the 'I have a vision and I'm no—' you know, 'I have the Ten Commandments etched into etched into rock, and my job is to beat you over the head with it till you get it.
Someone can have the greatest, greatest inspiration in the world, uh, and it can be great, there's no doubt about it. Um, but I think that's probably the exception rather than the norm, isn't it? Um, but it's— of course that can happen and does. Um, more frequently And again, it's one of the, the 5 practices of exemplary leaders is inspire a shared vision. You can inspire the vision, you can work together. Typically, you might have a small coalition of people who form the vision, help to sort of broadly define the vision, to articulate a vision, but then the really smart people get this, get people throughout the organisation and in the COTA environment, that would be encouraging what they call the volunteer army, the creative network of volunteers from throughout the organisation, and we've discussed volunteerism before, Frances, where give me one willing volunteer, you know, but if you can get, as for example HMS did
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