Friends and Colleagues:
Mission-Clarity-Trust-Accountability: I don’t think easily or comfortably in formulae. In fact, I try not to. Of course, I may be rationalizing a failing into a virtue. However, it seems clear that every strategic transition, even every life situation, contains elements of uniqueness. When we become comfortable with a formula we often train ourselves to miss evidence that lies outside it. So, in a recent meeting of an Independent Sector committee on which I serve, I was a bit surprised to hear myself say, “Mission, clarity, trust and accountability,” when asked if I could describe the leadership process my clients and I use in strategic transitions. It rolled off my tongue so easily I actually had reason to hope the others might believe that it had occurred to me in advance! It does, though, reflect both the values and the process I think a leader should bring to her colleagues.
Mission: It seems to me important to start with mission in any organization in any sector. The mission may be richer, more emotively engaging, in a nonprofit or a government agency but in a corporation, too, talking about mission is almost always a congealing force. People rarely join an organization hostile to or ambivalent about its mission. And the discussion of mission allows people to then talk about the personal values that reinforce that mission. “I’m here because I feel good about…. being part of a team/helping children well/serving the consumer better/making our sector more efficient.” Those are the kinds of value statements a mission dialog will elicit.
Clarity: And, once the leader begins to hear strong patterns among the values shared inside his organization he can begin to build toward clarity—by emphasizing those values that are most important to the organization's future, reaffirming the team's’ commitment to them and articulating options and choices based upon them. “Let’s agree,” he might say,” that every decision we make together can be tied back, in a coherent, credible way to making children well, that it will support our value of nurturing strong teams and move us toward our commitment of being a creative, flexible organization.” I once did a consulting project for the organization now called Susan G. Komen for the Cure. I wasn’t managing, but advising. In the large department with which I was working, I interviewed every employee and every one, from the Senior V.P. to the administrative assistants, could articulate her role in connection to the mission. There was a well understood chain from the mission (curing breast cancer), to strategic priorities, to the department’s responsibilities, to key tactics, to who gets to decide what, to how they would evaluate success. It was a mission-based clarity I had never seen before and may never have achieved but that I now know to be possible.
Trust: Having identified with mission and values of the organization and begun to build clarity on them, the leader has already made a significant down-payment on trust. Another essay in this series was devoted to the liberating power of mutual trust. Rather than reconstruct those thoughts here, I’ll refer my friends and colleagues to that essay on my website.
Accountability: In the process I describe here accountability is an extension of mission and values, of clarity and of trust. If we are serious about the mission and the values, if we have arrived at clarity as to where we are going and how, and if we are prepared to trust one another, then that trust demands that we both support one another and hold one another accountable, not just top down but bottom up and side to side. It demands that people who report to me as CEO be willing to say, “I’m not getting what I need from you,” as well as my being willing to say that to them. It demands that we support one another in failure but also that we limit the acceptable number of failures. Trust itself demands a rigorous 360 degree accountability that is as powerful as it is rare. I don’t expect, nor do I particularly want, to offer a similarly compact answer the next time I’m asked about leadership. I do, though, hope that others will find some utility in the notion of leading from mission to trust to clarity to accountability. As always, I welcome your comments and challenges.