Visionary Leaders Must Be Stopped
Several years have gone by since my family lived in Chattanooga, TN, but I still think of it often. Chattanooga is an interesting city, with a made-over downtown that is teeming with art, culture, and good food.
Like many other places, Chattanooga is still trying to find an identity not connected to a history of racial tension and injustice—but we were, and are still quite fond of it. All of these features are set into one of the most picturesque low-mountain landscapes I've ever seen. It was in the course navigating the narrow interstates that cut through Chattanooga's low-mountain landscape that I was granted perhaps one of the greatest leadership lessons I've ever learned.
Because the interstates are both narrow and winding, as they cut through the mountains near downtown Chattanooga, you can see for miles in front of you utterly unobstructed at specific points. This ability offers you an incredible opportunity to plan the route you'll take: what exit, if any; where the traffic is building up; if you should change lanes.
It's a visionary's dream because you can see, of course, in a sense limited to the moment and medium, the future and determine with all the given information precisely what to do further down the road.
One day, as I was driving, I found myself lost in looking down the road. I was lost in looking toward the future moves I needed to make, lost in looking toward how the route required me to shift, to get where I was going as quickly, and unimpeded as possible. I got so lost in looking down the road that I neglected to see what was right in front of me—rapidly slowing traffic.
Apparently, an accident had happened up ahead of me, and a line of cars had all gotten a clue and slowed down appropriately. I did not, and because I failed to pay attention, I came within inches of a major accident.
At that moment, I had a realization—looking too far into the future puts you in danger of causing a significant crash in the present.
The speed at which I was traveling and my vision being directed down the road almost caused a major pile-up, and worse, could have injured my wife and children. My wife's scream snapped me out of my long-term visionary trance, and some God-given reaction time helped me avoid a potentially fatal crash. This moment taught me more about leadership than almost any other.
Leaders, particularly highly visionary leaders, are consistently in danger of causing a significant crash in their organizations because in being hyper-future-focused, they have neglected what is right in front of them.
Being too future-focused has been a consistent hurdle in my life as a leader. The question is, how do we combat it? The answer is certainly not to overcorrect and become so present-oriented (Follow Up Post) that we never think through future needs or realities.
Here are a few things to consider if you, like me, are plagued with this problem.
Keep a running list of future ideas, goals, directions & priorities. I call these dream sessions, and I calendar them. I've found that being able to regularly mind-dump into a notebook where I believe our organization should be going next (hires, buildings, re-organizations, ministry focus, etc.) frees me from the trap of dwelling on the future at the expense of the present.
Keep process-oriented people around you, and permit them to be mean. Leaders like me need kill-joys in my life. I say that tongue-in-cheek, but here's what I mean: I need someone to ask me good questions and speak hard things to me about current priorities. They also have to challenge me to tether my vision to where we are RIGHT NOW and consider the STEPS necessary to get where we want to be.
Keep a keen eye on Operations. Yep, it is the nightmare that it sounds like, and I kind of enjoy crunching numbers and thinking through HR. It is probably the last thing a visionary leader wants to think about, but it is the context through which much of your vision has to pass. Staying in the ops conversation will help fuel a thoughtful balance between future-oriented thinking and present realities.
Those are three things that have been helpful for me, and I hope they can be for you too, no matter where you fall on the visionary leader scale or whatever type of leader you may be, for that matter...