Organizational vision scale
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The 0 to 10 "organizational vision scale" scale is supposed to be funny, but it's also supposed to be a wake-up call for many! Regardless of what type of organization you have - even if it's a children's swim club - having a clear vision, motto or principles changes the whole vibe. If there are important values you need to instill in your members, have them printed out the front to let people know you care and hold yourself and others to a high standard! So where does your organization fall?!
My Graphical Representation of the "Organizational Vision Scale" (0-10)
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When you look at this scale, think of any group you belong to that might benefit... and then send them the image! It might be the single act that motivates them to lift their game and become better at setting up a clear and bright vision. You'll be the catalyst, and they'll (hopefully) do all the work which, honestly, might be as simple as them going to a sign store and printing up a poster board with the word "values" at the top! Suddenly the community becomes tighter, and there will be fewer complaints to leadership or (if it's a company) HR, because people will start holding themselves to these values and standards.
The Motivation
The motivation behind this article is interesting. Part of the credit goes to burning man - a massive one-week desert festival-like event that has 10 guiding principles which are all fantastic and well voiced. While I can't recite them all to you off the top of my head, many of those principles, for instance Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Inclusion and, my favourite, Leaving No Trace become so ingrained in participants they take them back out into the world. There isn't a scrap of little left behind at the end. I then compared that to other festivals like Electric forest which doesn't have any formal principles they lay out for participants, and it's a different feel where people litter all over the place and it doesn't quite feel as safe. That was my first big revelation of how important it is to have good principles.
Fast forward to my study of and work with consent in the United States, and I noticed some communities in conscious dance, tantra and beyond did a great job of making people feel safe... and other's just dropped the ball. The biggest difference I noticed was it seemed to correlate with how fantastic, how clear and well-promoted their principles, guidelines and values were. In particular, the more places you print out your guidelines and values, the more people are likely to hold themselves and other to those standards.
Finally, I realized this applies to almost any organization. Whether you run a bar, dance club, massage parlour, or software engineering company, you'll eventually get people complaining about feeling violated in some way. For instance, in the bar and massage parlour if you don't spell it out that your employees should be inappropriately touching customers, then it will happen, and it's a lawsuit waiting to happen. If you're a good leader you'll try to talk to the person who has been complained against, but frankly, if you don't have clear values (literally) printed on the wall, then you won't have much of a leg to stand on, because they'll just say "I didn't know that was out of line". And yes, maybe someone smart wrote it into a long disclaimer or agreement you signed in the fine print, but they didn't read the fine print. Probably nor did you!
There really is a huge difference between a well-oiled company and one that feels wishy-washy. It's vision. The vision of the leadership, and their commitment to keeping everyone safe. Whether it's a sex commune, children's scout group or a 100,000-person company like Google... things can fall apart if the vision isn't clear and there are no benevolent values that permeate the bones of your people... from the top to the bottom.
Now to put my money where my mouth is. Me creating this graphic, means that for my own ecstatic dance workshops I run, I'd like to more nicely print out the principles we came up with (right now it's just hand-written on a posterboard, not printed)... and make sure it's repeated every lesson (in a concise way of course) for all the new people. When you do that within a community, my hope is that it will percolate to other conscious communities too!
The Quality of Vision
So Burning man with its 10 principles is kind of exceptional... for smaller organizations, a motto might be enough, or medium you might just bullet point three main values to try and increase the chance of people remembering them. But more importantly - each bullet point for your vision, guidelines or principles... has to be memorable. Think of Google's original: "don't be evil" and "don't be a jerk" policies.... and then there is "open company, no BS", "be the change you seek" and "don’t #@!% the customer" for Atlassian. All far more memorable than wishy-washy values like "Open and Respectful" and "Self-Critical" from Microsoft. Yawn. Value ultimately shouldn't be crafted by one person... it should be a team effort to refine something that reflects what you stand for and what you dream of in a punchy, impactful way. The impact of a vision statement is a product of its quality and the amount of effort you put into repeating it - even if if feels cheesy - embrace the cheesy for the betterment of your beloved peers. Think quality * quantity. If either of those is zero - if it's a shitty vision, or it's not repeated... then it's worthless!
Disclaimer
This is by no means calibrated well, but I really hope it inspires you and/or makes you smile.
Sincerely,
Andrew Noske
PS: Feedback is most encouraged! :)
See Also
- Toxic Organization Scale - Another spectrum, might apply to an organization that has bad practices.
