The Role of Visionary Leadership and Strategic Direction
One of the more exhausting things as a manager -and the proof that you are failing- is when your team needs continuous handholding. This can be that no one takes the next step until instructed to, that they keep making wrong decisions or prioritizing wrong. There can be mostly two reasons for that: they don’t have drive, or they don’t have direction. You may not want to hear about this because both are your responsibility.
Imagine you are driving but have not yet decided where you are going. Maybe you don’t have the slightest idea, or maybe you have a few options but don’t know which one you prefer. Why would you even start driving? But you started, so a few things can happen:
You hesitate at every turn, and you invest continuous effort in decision-making. You can arrive maybe someone more or less decent, at a high cost, and perhaps not where you should be.
You drive without minding the destination, maybe getting further away, maybe running in circles.
In any of these cases, there is motion but no progress, or there is no motion at all.
You can continue like this for a while, or you can, after some time, pull over and finally check the map, or give up and go home. You wasted time and effort because you lacked a clear vision and direction. I’m sorry to invalidate the fancy sentences on your wall, but that is not vision: vision must be something that tells you where to go and helps the high-level decision-making to get there.
Why you need clear vision and direction
Opposite to the above, when you go home, you may use slightly different paths every time, but you always arrive. You don’t need to memorize and repeat the steps. The specific turns are something you will figure out, and you can realign easily when needed -i.e., if you miss a step or one street is closed- because you don’t commit to steps, you commit to the destination.
That is a Vision: Do not obsess with the solution but with the problem to solve. Bricklayers think beyond the bricks; they think of walls, rooms, and entire buildings. Your team cannot work on single tasks but on a clear problem to solve.
There can be exceptions. As an entry level engineer it is fine if you think in terms of tasks and your work is transactional. But that’s just one stage in the journey, ideally one that should not last long. More on levels and career journey here:
If your team works one brick at a time, what you can expect to happen includes:
They need you to be there to tell them what the next task is. There is not a natural flow-through or logical next step.
They won’t be able to make any decisions because the context they have is limited to the task, and they don’t know how that contributes to something bigger. Which one moves more in that direction from any given two options?
They won’t be able to prioritize a given list of similar tasks for similar reasons.
They won’t know when something is done or not or when something relevant is missing. They can evaluate the acceptance criteria as written down, but they will be unable to zoom out and see if It really contributes to the bigger thing we want to achieve.
They will not be able to think ahead, propose new ideas, features, or experiences, or contribute to the specific thing we want to solve or improve for customers other than by mechanical execution.
All that results in micromanagement and handholding, underutilization of talent, wasted efforts, misaligned results, and inefficiency. And all this can be solved by setting a clear vision, giving direction, and aligning towards common goals.
Setting a clear direction and aligning cross-functional teams towards common goals.
You may want to keep some of these steps in mind.
Define a Clear, Shared Vision:
Define a unified vision statement/narrative aligning with the organization's objectives. You cannot make it up. It must be something you are trying to achieve.
Communicate and explain it, and ensure that all teams understand how their work contributes to this larger goal. It is not on the team to understand it but on you to connect the dots. Remember that it needs to be actionable, so it needs to be real.
Set Common Goals:
Establish specific, measurable goals that apply across all involved teams and clearly contribute to the vision - or at least align with it.
Communicate these goals and make sure everyone understands them. Prepare yourself to answer questions, reflect, and iterate when you don’t have answers.
Involve Key Stakeholders Early:
Engage leaders and representatives from each functional team in the goal-setting process and strategy definition.
Gather input and address concerns to ensure compatibility with reality and buy-in from all teams.
Promote Open Communication:
Encourage transparency and sharing of information to avoid silos.
Is there any new project? Is there a change in direction? Are we pursuing something different? Are priorities changing?
It doesn’t mean that everyone has to know everything leadership is discussing, but when something is decided, people must know, and when something will affect everyone significantly, key people must be consulted and their input incorporated.
Clarify Roles and Responsibilities:
Ultimately, everyone has to understand that everyone is part of the same mission but ensure that everyone understands their individual and collective responsibilities.
Clarify both boundaries and responsibilities that may not be so obvious. Are software developers required to do reports or take care of deployments, and if so, why? What is your objective, and what is expected of you?
Foster Collaboration:
Let teams understand how their different pieces of work contribute to something bigger. For example, software developers can enjoy working closely with customer service and operations and understanding how their products exist in real life.
Create collaboration opportunities for teams, such as joint projects or task forces.
Build trust by encouraging teams to share resources, knowledge, and expertise.
Provide Leadership and Support:
Ensure that leadership is actively involved in guiding the teams and resolving conflicts.
Do not give just a solution, but explain the rationale. Why was this chosen over this? Why that one was not an option? What are the guiding principles leading decisions?
Monitor Progress and Adjust:
Regularly review progress towards the common goals, use as much relevant data as possible, and do not use irrelevant data. For example, don’t measure developers by the number of commits: it can be faked and doesn’t contribute to any goal. Measure how many times they solved the problem you still didn’t tell them how to solve, or they were one step ahead in the right direction when you didn't even know the next step.
Address any misalignments or challenges promptly to keep teams on track. Understand where the misalignment comes from: ensure the direction is understood, relevant, and still makes sense.
Align Incentives and Rewards:
Design incentives that encourage collaboration and align with the achievement of common goals. Your success is not your task but how that task contributed to something bigger.
Recognize and reward teams and individuals who contribute to cross-functional success.
Celebrate Successes Together:
Reinforce the value of working together towards shared objectives by being explicit about what those objectives are.
Acknowledge and celebrate milestones and successes as a unified team, being explicit about what you are celebrating.
Final notes: Keep it real
It is very engaging to walk towards a vision and contribute to something that has an impact on the world. But detecting misalignment between narratives and reality causes the opposite effect, so there are key aspects to consider while defining your vision:
Make sure the vision is genuine and not just epic-sounding words. It has to be genuinely aligned with something the company is making continuous and proactive efforts to achieve.
Ensure your team understands, buys, and identifies what it means and what aspects of their work contribute to it. Be interactive, listen, give room to be challenged, and be equipped with genuine answers.
If the org is big, the teams' work can seem too far disconnected from that vision. Create a vision for the team that they identify with because it is easier to map to their work, and that clearly contributes to the overarching vision.
Give direction that aligns with that vision, is consistent, and is compatible with everyone’s day-to-day work, and that proves to be real when the time to celebrate arrives.