Three Steps to Visionary Leadership

"Three Steps to Visionary Leadership"
Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 5/8)

Jay: I think you made a fairly compelling case for moving into this style of leadership using visual storytelling, thinking, and tools. Now what do I do? How do I actually make this happen? 

Joran: There are three things we talk about in the book Visionary Leadership – three steps you can take. The first step is to take ownership of the problem. You have to take a hard look at your planning and your systems and your processes, the style of communication and leadership, all of that. You have to ask the hard questions. 

Does everybody have access to the things they need to become the collaborative, visual thinkers you're expecting them to be? Have you provided them with the necessary onboarding and training? Are you painting done around what success looks like for their specific role and how you see them fitting into your future vision? All of this is important. You have to do step one, take ownership of the problem, it is on you. And if it's not happening, you've gotta own it and start doing better. 

The second thing is to break the big thing into smaller things. This can feel overwhelming and it's a lot to do. You know, okay, we've done our customer experience journey, but now we've gotta change these 20 things in the process or in the company. Where do we even start? It's like cleaning out a closet. Take the things out and sort them and organize them and visually stack them and talk about what you're keeping and what you're tossing and is it urgent versus important? And you've gotta lay those things into a plan. You start that by putting things into smaller and smaller buckets. Then you can implement. 

Then the third one is really important. It should be the first thing because it's the most important,  ask for help. You cannot do this alone. You've gotta let your need for control go and not let it keep you from greatness. We talk a lot about the genius zone, which Gay Hendrix talks about in the Big Leap.

You've got to operate not from a space of competency or excellence, but your zone of genius, right? Which means you've got to delegate, offload some of these things to other people and, you've got to ask for help. That's hard for people. Like we've said, we are not in a culture, especially as men sometimes, and trained for and modeled to ask other people for help. You've got to stop and ask for help. Those scrum masters, those aren't the only people who can put stickies on a wall. Those hip looking creative directors aren't the only people in your organization who can think creatively. Those innovation teams that you've created aren't the only ones who can test and validate ideas and make the business better. All of this stuff has to be scaled throughout and it starts by asking for help.

Jay: One of the things that, as you're talking has come into my mind is this idea of being visionary. And how visionary is a visual tool and how that leads straight towards being able to visualize what it is that you want to achieve. Visual thinking and then needing to have tools and engagement that  seems to all tie it together.

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