INSTANT MBA: Everyone Needs To Know Where The Company Is Headed
Today's advice comes from Laurel J. Richie, President of the W.N.B.A, via The New York Times:
"I keep learning time and time again about how important it is as a leader to have a clear vision and communicate it often. I’m usually very clear in my head about where I think we should be going, and I’m always learning that you cannot overcommunicate that."
"I get a little bored with it because it’s familiar to me, but I realize it almost has to become a mantra so that everyone on the team knows where you’re headed. You tell people, 'Here’s where we’re headed and these are our priorities,' and then you just sense how often people are wandering."
Richie believes you should keep your employees confident about where the company is headed and that will enable everyone to work as a team to accomplish your organization's goals. It's important to give employees some room to stray from the pack and explore, but if you let them wander off too far they are at risk of losing sight of the company's mission.
"I always say that part of the job is keeping all the bunnies in the box. You start with all the bunnies in the box and then somebody gets a great idea to go do something else and you go help them all come back and get in line and then a bunny over here pops out. So the more the bunnies are getting out of the box, the more I realize I just haven’t done a good enough job communicating what our priorities are and what our focus should be."
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