Re: Shared Vision Tough Spots LO689

Michael McMaster (Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk)
Sun, 02 Apr 1995 22:58:33 GMT

Replying to LO611 --

Bill writes about vision work pursued by people who are at the upper edge
of ability ("all have had lots of experience" and my guess is the
organisation is _relatively_ small. His experiences and questions reveal
everything needed to make a solid case _against_ visioning in all its
commonly practiced forms and, more importantly, all the currently popular
theories regarding it. (That is, I acknowledge that there are those who
are doing different things and have different theories. Until the
theories are made publice, the things that they are doing will lose to the
popular "thinking".)

> Experiences include:
>
> - Visioning takes so long that we lose interest
> - There are so many different individual visions that we
> lose a lot of them in the blending
> - After we have the vision, it's nice but then we get back
> to work (ignoring it)

All of the experiences are interrelated (no suprise here) so I won't deal
with them one by one. The length of time has something to do with the
inauthenticity of the goal as well as the process. My vision is not
subject to "blending". It is possible that we might arrive at a common
vision by a dialogue process where we each continually shape what we want
by the dialogue itself. However, this is not "blending" nor is it
alignment. This would be a process of creation and the vision, if it
arose would likely be both compelling (rather than "nice but so what") and
something that could not be identified as blending.

The language of complex adaptive systems provides a handy term here. Its
"emergence". That is, a vision might emerge from a dialogue. The term in
this useage has an operational definition which is non-trivial. Emergence
is used here to deonote a phenomenon which creates something that did not
exist before and, while some of the elements involved in its emergence can
be identified, the result cannot be traced back in any causal way to those
elements. The emergent phenomenon is an entity in itself - not merely an
improvement on its originating elements.

What has the "vision statement" that is blended, took too long and is not
compellingly meaningful be exactly that is that it never did have a place
in the coordinated action of those involved and was never perceived as
needed _by pragmatic test_. (It may have been perceived as needed by
theory or accepted ideology.)

The above provides a context for some of the questions below.

> Some thought provoking questions that emerged were:
>
> Why does this vision stuff drive us nuts?
> If we write a vision, so what? What happens next?

If you write a vision down - specially if you post in some intentionally
lasting form - then you have taken a living process of dialogue which
might be useful to continue (at intervals) forever, and replaced its
medium for existence. It will have gone out of the domain of conversation
and into the domain of artifacts. Why be suprised that something dies
when you put it into a dead medium?

> Why does it get watered down?

What else can happen in a "blending" process? What's the difference
between blending and watered down? What might be useful here is to create
the distinction between _a_ shared vision and _sharing our visions with
each other_ as a regular practice. The problem can be seen in the use of
"it" to talk about vision. Even for a single person, vision is not
singular nor is it a conrete "it".

> Why don't things happen?
> Why is the final written copy the LEAST amount than everyone agrees to?
> Is it really the right thing to do? (When and when not?)

It might be the right thing to do if the expressions (in words and action)
of many of a community or organisation seem to be polarising about what is
wanted. Then a process of "visioning" may begin to make clear what is
being expressed already. It is the process that might stick rather than
the actuality of the vision. When learning, development and production
are moving apace, why bother? Or maybe its always time to engage in a
vision process and never a time to actually have a vision. (There's a new
book out that I haven't read but I loved the title of. Its something like
"How to be happy without goals.")

> How SHARED does it have to be?

How shared can anything be amongst a group of diverse people? How shared
do ideas, vision or intention need to be in a community, a marketplace, a
sports team or an organisation? Isn't it enough that there is lots of
dialogue, lots of interaction, lots of exchange? (I suspect that the
"need" for things like shared vision arise because there is an authority
structure that is trying to force something to happen.)

> Why VISION instead of PURPOSE?

Purpose will fall into the same trap of singularity, explicitness and
concretisation. Here's my question: "Why do we need the idea of either
when we have got along fine without them for so long?" This is question
demanding a pragmatic answer, rather than a theoretical one. (That will
help answer the following measurement question as well.)

The point is that we exist in a complex of already visions, purposes,
values, etc. By making one or more explicit, we don't necessarily gain
anything and will certainly lose some of the balance and connectivity that
already exists. I suggest that the challenge is to discover those that
are already there as a continuous process and to enhance, build on or
transform those - also as a continuous process.

> How do we know if we are really DOING it? (measurement)

If this question cannot be answered _and_ there is no compulsion to find
good answers to it, then I suggest we have a very good sign that its not
an authentic area of activity.

> I think we have a pretty good understanding as to the theory behind shared
> visioning (reasons why & approach), but would appreciate other thoughts,
> especially around best practices to address the above issues.

I think that there is _not_ a good understanding of the theory of shared
vision. That is, I don't think its grounded in any theory of organisation
nor theory of human intelligence or human action that will stand the tests
of rigorous thought. The thinking that it is grounded in can be traced to
Cartesian approaches to psychology which has a "man as machine" basis for
its views of mental activity and human action. This can be traced to
deeper and much older philosophical roots which are the foundation of all
(popular) western thought.
>
My prediction is: The "vision thing" is not going to survive the decade.

-- 
Mike McMaster      <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
    "Postmodern society is the society of computers, information, scientific
knowledge, advanced technology, and rapid change due to new advances in
science and technology."          Postmodern Theory, Best & Kellner