Aligning Visions and Values To Actual Performance

Dreams lie at the cornerstone of all human accomplishment! They are the true foundation from which achievement is created. All great successes commence with a dream – a dream that is transformed into goals and plans. When Napolean Hill (best selling author of Think and Grow Rich), pronounced to the world, “Thomas Edison dreamed of a lamp that could be operated by electricity and despite more than 10,000 failures, stood by his dream until he made it a physical reality”, he not only honoured one of the most significant men of mankind and illuminated the importance of perseverance – he also highlighted the power of the dream! Dreams matter. They instigate a plan for success, and they motivate the planner toward an extension of their plan. And dreams do come true – particularly when you back them with a process and a will never to surrender! People need to acknowledge the purpose of their pending commitment. They need to revel in the excitement of what’s possible and positive.

Dreams can be both personalised and of a team nature. Clearly identifying and defining our dream and vision is a vital first stage in generating the attachment any leader wants from his team. It warrants sufficient attention, and should be something not restricted by the incursion of time. From my experience, accuracy in refining the dream and vision enables everything to flow – and teams who see its creation as a necessary evil are almost certainly doomed to failure! The ideal vision begins with a scanning of the future environment, with a view to formulating dreams worth believing in and fighting for.

Within the Kiwis environment in 2005, coaches Brian McClennan, Graeme Norton and myself took the (perhaps) unprecedented step of prescribing the dream and vision, and then set about selling it to the players. As a group who had not experienced victory in any of their previous eight encounters against either Australia or Great Britain, it was our consideration that the team would not create a lofty enough aspiration were they given the chance. By prescribing and selling the dream and vision we were able to create a truly powerful challenge – and the players warmed to the challenge! In articulating our dream (‘Raise the respect and mana for the jersey by having a team of benchmark players’) and vision (‘Create a dynasty based on sustainable success on the international stage’) to the players, we would have to show our own commitment to both. We would also have to excite the players to pursue it with us – and this they apparently did! Without enthusiasm there would be no motivation and no inspiration.

Significantly however, I don’t believe any of the players in our team ever truly owned our vision to the extent we did – if the truth be known, they didn’t need to. As I venture through the various organizations it has been (and is) my privilege to assist, I regularly become alerted to a recurring theme. Frustration! Frustration brought about by a leader’s despondency that those in their care aren’t demonstrating the kind of passion for the vision they believe to be essential. And what’s my response? “Why would they? It’s your vision. They might need to be aware of its existence, but to expect them to truly own it might be somewhat naïve.”

You see, when all is said and done the vision exists to ensure those ascribed with the responsibility of leadership have a frame within which to align their people. More specifically, the vision provides the leader with an opportunity to set the objectives of their staff, comfortable in the knowledge that accomplishment of the objectives will directly align to the vision – and in the process ensure all people’s efforts are most likely to produce a desired and maximized outcome. Moreover, a leader in possession of a clearly determined vision is in an unprecedented position to most accurately monitor the performance and outputs of their staff. By constantly reflecting on the work performance of their staff in accordance with the vision, these leaders can be assured of an uncluttered attention to essential detail. In a difficult economic time, minimizing waste (both of finance and time) is a necessary consideration, and I don’t know of a better strategy for achieving this than ensuring all staff members are closely aligned to the specific objectives most likely to bring a vision to reality.

But if the Kiwis’ dream and the vision were predominantly the domain of their leadership, the values that would accompany them were anything but. Words count for little unless they are backed up by actions that can be measured. It was imperative that we were able to identify what personal sacrifices were required, and that the players fully owned these sacrifices, as they would be the ones required to ensure them. The players (consisting only of the New Zealand-based players in the first instance) were divided into small groups, given a list of 31 potential values, asked to make any additions to the existing list, and ultimately asked to identify the six to eight values that each of the smaller groups believed to be the most relevant. After a lot of discussion and the unification of the smaller groups, the players eventually agreed on the eight core values that would become the cornerstone of what in essence was a cultural change program. These values were to be lived and measured daily, were defined to everybody’s satisfaction, and were reinforced wherever and whenever possible:

Dream;  Raise the respect and mana for the jersey by having a team of benchmark players

Vision;  Create a dynasty based on sustainable success on the international stage

Mission:  We will achieve this through a RUTHLESS COMMITMENT and COMPREHENSIVE PREPARATION that results in a complete TRUST in:

·               The playing systems in the team;

·               Knowledge of our playing roles;

·               The protocols and disciplines existing within the team structure, and;

·               Each member of the team’s dedication to be the best player they can be for our team.

Underpinning this commitment will be a strong sense of FAMILY and ENJOYMENT, which will be revealed through the PASSION we bring to our play and the constant pursuit of KAIZEN in everything we do.

More particularly, it becomes imperative that the values of the team be more than simple words on a piece of paper. Having a group’s values evolve into actual prevailing thoughts is absolutely essential if they are to stand for anything – when all is said and done, the values are the one thing that most direct the behaviour and performance of team members. Within the Kiwis, we had each of our players define each of the values (from a personal perspective), firm in the knowledge that this alone could drive a committed “think” toward the significance of the values. From that point, our principal objective became the significance we placed on keeping the importance of the values alive. Providing each of our players with a team list - accompanied by the agreed upon definitions – we asked each of the players to identify (from one to four) the players who best represented our values. Having players then speak to their choice, we were able to accomplish two very important outcomes. First, creating a benchmark of our most revered (from a values perspective) players meant other players could have a standard to aspire to. Second, ensuring those who best represented our values received the peer accolades they deserve, meant we were able to promote the importance of the values to a deservedly high level.  

Running a values-based program is critical to success in sport – or so have been my experience with variable groups such as the New Zealand Speed skating team of 1993, the North Harbour NPC rugby team of 2001, the New Zealand men’s hockey team, and the Kiwis of both 2000 and 2005-2006. Our values were everything to the Kiwis – and that’s why we promoted them and reinforced them in everything we did. Moreover, devoting time to the induction and alignment of those under your care to a well-conceived vision, ensures the work outputs of all can be both aligned and maximised.