Editorials
Transparency: Act Three – Leaders Maintain Focus
There is an idiom in sports that has been liberally applied to life situations where maintaining your focus is all-important…it is to “keep your eye on the ball.” It means simply to give complete attention to what you are doing. In the realm of leadership’s work in strategic planning and management, it can be the difference maker between success and failure in realizing an organization’s goals and vision.
Let’s take an example from the world of golf. Here is how maintaining focus applies to striking a golf ball:
“Very few golfers stand still when looking at the ball and concentrate their attention on seeing the ball clearly. A lot of the times people will give a glance in the direction they want the ball to go, then they look back at the ball. Many golfers would be shocked to find out that they don’t stand still and keep their eye on the ball. The second your gaze shifts from the ball during any part of the swing problems occur. A lack of concentration is responsible for most golfing mistakes. You can hit the ball well when you can clearly see the ball at every point in your swing from start to finish.” (Courtesy of http://www.golf-swing-answers.com)
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Now envision your finished plan as a golf ball and you are standing on the first tee. You take out your driver (staff and leadership team), grip it (get organized), take aim (provide leadership), wind up and give it a rip (implement). Did you hit it down the middle or did you achieve something else? Perhaps you hit it off target into an adjacent hazard of woods, sand or water. Or…Tiger Woods forbid…miss it completely (the dreaded whiff) and go nowhere at all. All remain possibilities throughout a round of golf and equally so for implementing your plan. Fortunately it is far easier to keep your plan in play than a golf ball.
Here are practical actions you can take to help you maintain focus and ensure successful implementation / execution of your plan:
- Keep the members of your staff and leadership team strategically focused. Connect them to the plan’s information within a continuous process / cycle of development, execution and performance evaluation.
- Maintain visibility and access to your plan’s information. Make it coexist with and live in the day-to-day it is supposed to be directing.
- Create an organic relationship between the strategy (plan goals and objectives) and tactics (projects) of your organization by measuring, reporting and evaluating the right set of performance metrics consistently and continuously. This will allow your team to monitor ongoing progress between delivering the mission and achieving the vision for your organization…keep it real.
- Lead by example! As you bring your team along in doing the work of managing and communicating strategically focused information you must be right there doing your share. Without your full commitment there will be no staff buy-in and you will have wasted precious time and resources. This is not easily done nor quickly established. To do it requires strong leadership that believes 100% in the cause and has the unwavering patience to get it done.