Business Lives in Conversation: Leading with Vision, Not Just Tactics

Lately I’ve been reminded of a saying we have used around our business for decades:

Business lives in conversation.

The origin of this thinking comes from our consulting work helping organizations create breakthroughs and unprecedented business results. The principle is simple,

If business lives in conversation, then the quality of our conversations determines the quality of our results.

Over the last few months, I have worked with hundreds of managers and leaders. One of the exercises I often run is straightforward:

What do you actually do all day?

Where are you spending your time?

On what? With whom? For how long?

What do you talk about?

The answers are always the same.

We talk about the work we are doing.

Status updates.

Solving problems.

Crisis management.

People issues. Etc…

Sound familiar?

In other words, we are talking about and mostly engaged in the tactical.

What’s noticeably absent? Strategic thinking and dialogue around the outcomes we are trying to create, or our vision of success.

Managers and leaders admit a lack of focus or time spent discussing where we’re going, why we’re going there, or what success really looks like beyond this week’s deliverables.

And then we wonder why progress feels incremental. Why we get caught in the “tyranny of the urgent”. Why momentum stalls.

One of our clients committed to this idea of changing the narrative from daily tactical conversations to an outcome orientation. He started sharing the business vision with everyone, formally and informally often. Then engaged people in the question – in what ways do you think we could achieve it? New generative thinking and creativity emerged.

As a result, in a few short months he had a much more energized team and dramatically increased their profitability in one division.

If you want to increase the impact in your organization or team, lead with the outcomes in mind.

• Lead with the vision in conversations.

• Lead with outcome-oriented thinking vs problem solving.

• Involve your people, your customers, and all stakeholders in these conversations – in what ways can we…?

Business breakthroughs are rarely born when we are locked in the urgent. They are born in strategic leadership. They are born conversation.

Have a great week.

Action is all there is!

Kevin