Notes To A Visionary Leader – Reinventing Is Your Ongoing Role

10 Things to Focus on to Reinvent Organization, Work, Self and Relationships

1. Make everything about your Envisioned Future – everything! The envisioned future is the one you are committed to bringing into existence. This is not the past extended future, or the wouldn't it be nice if… future, or the with a bit of luck future, and, most of all not the reasonable future of an investor pitch. This is the future of vision, of passion, of creation. The future with no foundation yet except, I say so, as in a declaration. Put this Envisioned Future first, in everything, all the time!
2. Plot a pathway back from the envisioned future to the present: Put in milestones for quarters, months weeks – yes even days, so everyone can tell they are on course, or knows quickly when they are off course
3. Forecast from the present into the likely future – extrapolate from the present – same time scale as #1.  The best case, most likely case, worst case. Then scale the delta between the extrapolated future and your envisioned future – this is “the gap” to be closed – for every KPI 
4. Align all: processes, policies, practices, strategies, structures, projects, accountabilities, behaviors and… with the envisioned future 
5. Create roles: all the roles necessary to realize the envisioned future with personal accountability and development plans for every role, identifying in each case “the gap” – between what the role holder knows how to deliver, given history and experience, and what they need to invent and discover how to deliver, given the envisioned future, and the role(s) they are being counted on to play in its realization 
6. Build: breakthrough projects; skills, competencies, and strengths; systems, processes, practices, policies, rules, procedures… all that's necessary to support the envisioned future
7. Dismantle: everything and anything that could thwart the envisioned future: legacy systems, out-of-date policies and procedures, constraining rules, old habits …  
8. Create: visual displays for every role to track actual/real time performance against forecast, and against the envisioned future so everyone can see the gap being closed – or not 
9. Do: regular After Action Reviews: What worked? What did not work? What was missing? Make sure there are robust practices and processes to implement learnings 
10. Notice: and celebrate every action and outcome that is consistent with the envisioned future. Acknowledge, appreciate and reward; Reflect and savor; Build and share the stories of the organizations – of heroes, battles won, adversity triumphed over, moments of kindness, compassion and human greatness – the reinforcing of purpose and meaning.