Vision provides meaning, motivates, and mobilizes resources. Strategy provides the plan. Tactics take care of execution. In this scenario, are all the pillars equal?
At the 2014 European Championship Women's 4x400m Relay Final in Zurich, Switzerland, the French athlete Floria Guei turns the tables and wins the race, to everyone's surprise. This race is a lesson in many ways.
What follows in this blog will make sense if you spend 58 seconds viewing this amazing performance :-): 2014 Women's 4x400m Final.
The lesson is clear at first glance: Never underestimate the resources available to others, and by extension, never underestimate your own resources.
But let's go a little further: Everything seems lost, and in less than 40 seconds, Floria Guei changes the situation against all odds. What can we deduce from this?
1 - YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE IT TO SEE IT
For us, the spectators, this incredible finish had to be seen to be believed. But for Floria, the leader, it had to be believed to be seen: It is because Floria believed in a possible victory that she mobilized all her resources and all her energy and won. Against all odds.
So, how can you motivate yourself without a vision that gives meaning, direction, and a reason to move forward? The leader's vision is essential to mobilizing and motivating employees. Undertaking and carrying out a project is always tricky because the expectation of the project is, by definition, to cause change. Money and salary are neither powerful nor sustainable enough drivers to carry out projects, remove barriers, and overcome the obstacles that those who want to change the situation are constantly confronted with.
The only driver powerful and resistant enough to remove these barriers and overcome these obstacles is passion—the meaning that is put into the adventure undertaken. Only vision mobilizes the energies necessary to execute change powerfully and sustainably. Vision and meaning are key in mobilizing and motivating resources.
2 - YOU MUST DOUBT TO SURVIVE
Forty seconds before the end of the race, everyone is convinced that the game is over for Floria and that the three leaders will win the first three places. In 40 seconds, Floria turns the tables: What you believe is never certain. Success is never a given.
It seems to me that we must always try to distinguish what we believe from what we know. Doubting is healthy. Of course, doubting is painful, as it is reassuring and relaxing not to doubt, but doubting is often a condition of survival (so much so that in some extreme sports, habits and certainties can literally kill). Never take success for granted. Andy Grove, the legendary boss of Intel, developed this theory on adaptation to change: "Only the paranoid survive."
3 - WE MUST ACT AS MUCH AS THINK
When we win in a desperate situation, we often hear that luck has helped us... Is this really the case?
Is it by chance that Floria Guei chose a very precise moment to launch the offensive that will make her win? Or does Floria identify this moment by constantly measuring and estimating her resources, the distance remaining to cover, her speed, the speed of the others, and the perceived resources of the others… before deciding to launch the offensive at the exact moment that will make her win to the hundredth of a second? Luck or situational intelligence?
Situational intelligence and tactics are thus as fundamental to success as reflection and planning. Strategy and plans are necessary for success, but they do not guarantee it and are not sufficient. Situational intelligence allows us to adapt, change, and decide based on external and internal events and to steer and act tactically. This is how programs and projects are: strategy, target, and program are fundamental, but program execution, governance, steering committees, and PMOs are just as essential to success.
Vision provides meaning, motivates and mobilizes resources; strategy provides the plan; tactics take care of execution. In this scenario, are all the pillars equal?
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Laurent
