MIT Sloan Management Review

Leadership and Organizational Studies

 

Finding Meaning in the Organization

By Joe Raelin

April 1, 2006

Too often, leaders impose top-down visions on their organizations. The best leaders identify and express the meaning that is inherent in the organization's work.

Buy article & permissions

Traditionally, an organization’s executives are expected to create the vision for the organization; in fact, that is perhaps the most fundamental of all leadership functions. Leaders, according to the conventional view, articulate a vision to give a sense of purpose to the organization.

Once the vision is developed, the executives’ next task is to promote its adoption throughout the organization. There are particular expressions that depict this process, such as “aligning the organization with its strategy” or “cascading the vision down the ranks.” The tacit operating assumption is that the leaders, in a classic top-down fashion, divine a mission that becomes actualized as it is adopted by the ranks. Here’s how former Secretary of State General Colin Powell describes the visioning process, as captured by Oren Harari in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell1: “[Effective leaders] articulate vivid, overarching goals and values, which they use to drive daily behaviors and choices among competing alternatives…. Their decisions are crisp and clear, not tentative and ambiguous…. They convey an unwavering firmness and consistency in their actions, aligned with the picture of the future they paint.”

The theme of this excerpt is that leaders need to be very clear about their vision. Notice also the choice of words — especially the word “drive,” which suggests that people need to be driven toward the vision. Furthermore, the... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

 
 

In This Issue

 

Best Sellers