I was working with a client, a young entrepreneur who had quite successfully grown his business from nothing to a several million dollar enterprise with 14 employees in 5 years. We had an interesting dilemma – he could see very clearly where he was taking the company. He had shared it with his employees in meetings, in one-on-one conversations, anytime he had a chance. I had just done interviews with all of them. Without fail they told me that not only was the direction fuzzy for the company, but they weren’t sure of what they needed to do. Because of this, their faith that the company was going to grow and prosper was in doubt.
The CEO wondered how there could be such a disconnect. The vision was clear. He shared it openly and frequently. Why couldn’t they get it?
It just happened that he had a large poster similar to this one on his wall. It was the perfect metaphor for how his employees felt. They knew the CEO knew where he was going, but they couldn’t see it. The path was foggy and they could not see the end point. In fact, they were not even sure what steps they needed to take in the next few months to move the company along the path.
The CEO did several things to fix the situation. He didn’t stop communicating about his vision, but he found ways to communicate it more concretely and in ways they could begin to see an outline in the fog. Most importantly, he got very tangible and specific about the next few steps everyone needed to take. He focused on the next 6 to 8 weeks – and by doing so gave his team direction, confidence and momentum. He got comfortable with the notion that his vision was not going to be as clear to others as it was for him – and that his job was to “lift the fog” – even if it was one step at a time.
