This very short essay of seven insights was born of a struggle with the question of “vision enablement”, i.e. how to keep the vision of customer satisfaction burning bright in every employee’s mind. It defines “vision sharing” as the “collective act of individualized seeing”, which implies that vision cannot be “given”; it must be “owned”.
I
Why should everyone perceive value creation?
So that each one feels valuable.
But in order that each feels valuable, one must not only define global “value” but also local, located creation of value: each one must feel, “We have created great value, and I have contributed genuinely to this act of creation.”
This is human fulfilment at work.
II
So how to define global value creation?
We have tried out two distinct approaches:
- We asked whether value resides in what the customer “received”, i.e. I am as valuable as what my customer perceived. This is limited as an approach.
- We asked whether value resides in the “act of creation”: the how. Primarily because human fulfilment is itself a two-part journey: one, creating value as a group (what the customer received); two, contributing as an individual (the act of creation).
III
So the question becomes:
How to combine “customer value” creation with “individual contribution to value” into an integrated definition of value. That is, value is neither “outside” in the customer’s world nor “inside” in my mind; it is in the integrated “whole” that transcends both inside and outside.
This integrated “whole perception of value” we call enablement: both inside and outside, and more.
IV
How to “uncover” or “unearth” this value?
If it is located in the totality of “engagement” (both the act of creation and the customer value delivered), then it cannot be mechanistically or logically isolated. It is not a product of reasoning. It is a “collective act of individualized seeing”.
V
This is what leaders do.
They enable “collective yet individualized seeing of an emerging whole”.
VI
This is what every person must do in the world to unfold. Each one a leader. Each one a follower.
VII
It is this “collective act of individualized seeing” that results in:
- purposive behaviour in the system;
- the “owning-up” of responsibility by each individual to a common purpose; and
- the tacit “agreement” among all that each will do what it takes to make it happen.