Achieved Strategies

Recently I wrote about the blinding impact of a leader’s obsession to achieve goals.  Such obsession can easily turn into a myopic perspective yielding management edicts that distract and deflate employees.  There is no room for leadership when obsession dominates.  The persistent, unreasonable preoccupation of an idea will drive a manager to place higher importance of his ideas over others.  And the ability to see other realities or possibilities is eclipsed by the leader’s blind spots.  We must replace obsession with something else.  That something else is interaction.

It’s interactions with employees, direct reports, peers, the Board, the community, and with customers.  The moment the thought to connect with others surfaces in a leaders mind, possibility becomes reality.  When leaders get that their role is to interact and connect others to accomplish a goal, the need to obsess over goal achievement dissipates.  Something more powerful emerges from this leadership act: meaning to the context surrounding work is understood.

As leaders, we must ensure the work place environment and culture (context) encourages freedom in choice, approach, and application of knowledge to get work done.   Senior leaders are the first guardians, if you will, of the culture.  This level of leadership weaves a company’s values into decisions made.  Obstacles that land in a company’s journey are acknowledged and shared.  A transparent and honest style of communication evolves, assuming employees, direct reports, peers, the Board, the community, and even customers can handle the truth.

Giving meaning to work is not an edict and it doesn’t have one common understanding.  Giving meaning to work requires a leader to show up and treat people as people.  It means a leader understands that a company’s employees have a story.  That story is central to each person’s life.  It humanizes the workforce.  It’s a shift.  It’s the kind of shift that revolutionizes the way organizations and its employees work together to deliver on its promise to customers.

And through this view on the interaction between leaders and employees, meaning in work is achieved.  It’s not a focus, but an outcome.