Don’t miss our upcoming webinars!

Don’t miss our upcoming webinars! Employee Surveys: Why Engagement is Not Strategic Tuesday, January 29th at 12:30 EST While engagement surveys may be the industry norm, they only measure one aspect of your business. To truly drive meaningful change, you need to craft your survey with an eye on your strategic priorities, so that you are getting a complete picture of your strengths, challenges, and areas of opportunity. Join OrgVitality partners Jeffrey Saltzman and Dr. Scott Brooks as they explain how to promote employee engagement while positioning your company for strategic success. Register here   Sustaining the Business Culture and Staff Through Economic Downturn Tuesday, February 26th, 12:30 EST Many signs point to a looming economic slowdown, prompting many businesses to start worrying and planning for another recession. This webinar, based on research conducted during the previous recession, will cover what organizations can do to manage their cultures and their people through economic uncertainty. Please join OrgVitality’s CEO Jeffrey Saltzman as he shares some critical factors to consider to help your organization and employees survive upheaval and uncertainty. Register here.

Visionary Ideas

What motivates an organization or a movement of any kind to persevere, even in the face of adversity? It is when the organization or movement is based on a concept or an idea of what it stands for or potentially can become. This holds true for very small organizations as well as the largest. It holds true for political, human rights, conservation, religious movements etc.

Ideas are powerful. They are more powerful than physical assets, more powerful than territory, more powerful than any one person. Having a powerful idea is a cornerstone that a successful organization or movement needs to be built upon.

The founder of a small family run restaurant has the idea of building a “go-to” restaurant for locals and something the founder can pass on to the next generation. That is a visionary idea, and as contained as it might be, it is powerful for that family. They will fight ferociously and work endlessly for that vision.

The USA Declaration of Independence stated “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That is a visionary idea, an expansive one, and if fully implemented very powerful. And out of that powerful visionary idea sprang our institutions, our laws, our methods of governance with its checks and balances, all of which were intended to support and nourish the vision.

Taken from that perspective and at the risk of gross oversimplification, you could say that the outcome of WWII was preordained. For the Germans were rallying to and fighting for Hitler and yes, while he did have a vision of a new German and ethnically cleansed World Order, his apparent narcissism and megalomania made him central to that vision and put himself forth as the only one who could accomplish that vision. But the USA and its allies were fighting not for a person, but for an idea, a vision of how they were going to live their lives. A much more potent force.

People will dedicate their lives and under certain circumstances sacrifice them for a vision in which they believe. Jim Mattis, the highly respected and outgoing Secretary of Defense in his farewell note to Pentagon staff stated, “I am confident that each of you remains undistracted from our sworn mission to support and defend the Constitution while protecting our way of life.” A clear message of support for and direction to protect the vision of the USA and not any one person.

And while a lawyer may claim that they would “take a bullet” for a particular client, when faced with the reality of prison for crimes committed, that sacrificial commitment to an individual rings hollow. As it turns out, many people are susceptible to and find authoritarians attractive, as they state that they will take care of all of your problems and that they alone can do it (the estimate is up to 30% of the USA population are attracted to authoritarians), but over the long-run belief in and support of a commonly-held and widely supported vision will beat an authoritarian figure. Articulating and getting buy-in to that vision is key.

Each organization out there, no matter your size, industry or location should examine the vision by which it operates. If the vision is not explicit to the organization’s members, consider making it so, for it is hard to buy into a rumored vision. And make it a vision in which each member can feel pride. Commitment and dedication will be the reward the organization can obtain.