1. One of the most talked-about and least understood dimensions of business and institutional thinking is the dimension of “collective aspiration”.
2. The current language of business, for example, is limited to terms such as strategy, mission, vision and values. While these terms are valuable, at their core lies a widespread recognition that words and reality mean two totally different things in the corporate world.
3. This gap between words and action is attributed either to the impracticality of these ideas (or concepts), or to a lack of sincerity on the part of those implementing them in following through.
4. Is it not possible that this gap between words and action is born neither of poor quality of thought nor of lack of sincerity, but of a misreading of a critical driver of human action, which is aspiration?
5. Aspiration represents the joy-seeking, affirming dimensions of an individual. It demonstrates human hope, man’s desire for growth and change, and man’s engine for self-transformation.
6. Aspiration is therefore an individual’s best friend: providing him or her with a tomorrow, generating possibilities, defining new sources of energy, and creating the ineffable “positive buzz” that is infectious and inclusive.
7. Collective aspiration is the collective manifestation of individual aspirations. It is very difficult to say whether individuals together created the aspiration, or whether the aspiration self-selected the individuals who are working together.
8. Whatever or wherever its origin, collective aspiration is a real entity. It determines the capacity to bridge the gap between ideas and action: not just the distance between the two but, more important, which ideas and actions will be bridged.
9. In other words, collective aspiration represents the “reality” of fulfilment for a collective. There is real pain only if aspirations, and the ideas embodying those aspirations, are not met in action and results. The rest is simply irrelevant at a fundamental level.