The process of sharing a company’s vision and goals is important to motivate employees to participate in work activities. This stage is essential for a growing company as employees may be unaware of the organization’s vision, and it should be shared effectively. The purpose of this paper is to provide summaries of recent sources in which this problem is discussed in detail.
Folkman’s “8 Ways to Ensure Your Vision Is Valued”
In his article, Folkman analyzes specific strategies that can be applied by employers to guarantee that their visions are valued and followed by their employees. According to Folkman, workers need to understand how their activities or performance can contribute to the development and vision of the company. Referring to data from more than 50,000 employees, the author of the article explains eight ways to make a company’s vision effectively shared, meaningful, and actively followed. These strategies include communicating the vision through several different channels, making the vision motivating, and making it contribute to employee satisfaction. The problem that many companies have when trying to get employees to follow the vision is that the vision is not communicated or shared appropriately. All leaders need to participate in this sharing process (Folkman). More approaches include a focus on innovation, employees’ concentration on actions while being guided by managers, and a focus on the openness and integrity of company leaders. Furthermore, it is also critical to make sure that companies quickly respond to employees’ needs based on their vision; by doing so, the associated benefits can be easily observed.
Harrison’s “Employee Alignment: The Secret Sauce to Success”
The problem of employee alignment based on sharing organizational visions, values, and goals, as well as communicating with employees and developing commitment, is discussed in Harrison’s article. The author provides several examples of how it is possible to ensure employee alignment by focusing on accentuating the visions, missions, and goals of an organization. In her examples, Harrison refers to the experience of Andre Lavoie, the CEO of ClearCompany. According to the article, leaders need to deliver messages directly to receivers, align everyday activities and tasks with the general goals of the company, and ensure that employees know and are committed to the organization’s aims. Besides, it is also important not to organize weekly meetings in situations where all employees share the company’s goals and have demonstrated their commitment (Harrison). However, it is necessary to provide employees with feedback to discuss their strengths. Finally, to achieve employee alignment, leaders need to support transparency in the company.
Lavoie’s “How to Engage Employees Through Your Company Vision Statement”
The purpose of Lavoie’s article is to provide three recommendations on how to motivate and involve employees with the help of a company’s vision. The author emphasizes the idea that the formulation of clear and effective vision statements is essential to leading a company to success because it creates engaged and motivated employees (Lavoie). According to the author, employees should not only learn a company’s mission, vision, and goals but should also follow them while being engaged in the process. Therefore, leaders need to reformulate their vision statements to accentuate the goals that should be achieved by employees. Furthermore, a good vision statement needs to be visible, and Lavoie discusses how this vision should be related to all employees of the company. It is also important to apply the practice of storytelling, with a focus on sharing stories of success, to guarantee that all employees know their company’s vision. These approaches are discussed by Lavoie as an effective means of attracting employees and making them more involved in the process of working on strategic goals as a result of the shared vision.
Martin et al.’s “The Importance of Inspiring a Shared Vision”
In their article, Martin et al. focus on identifying specific advantages of promoting a shared vision concerning the role of the leader in this process. The researchers conducted a mixed-methods study based on collecting data with the help of interviews and protocols. It is important to note that as a result of their research, the authors have some interesting details to discuss. When employees are concentrated on the shared vision, they follow organizational goals more effectively, and their commitment to the company is also high. Leaders need to pay much attention to using the vision as a way to orient employees, help them interact with each other, and help them participate in organizational transformations (Martin et al. 7). The researchers conclude that a vision shared in any company could be viewed as an effective driving force to make employees more focused on achieving the company’s goals while working as a team.
The paper has presented summaries of four sources that can be used while selecting effective methods of sharing a company’s visions and goals with its employees quickly and efficiently. The authors’ ideas are reviewed in detail so that these notes can be used for further research on the problem.
Works Cited
Folkman, Joseph. “8 Ways to Ensure Your Vision Is Valued.” Forbes. 2014. Web.
Harrison, Kate. “Employee Alignment: The Secret Sauce to Success.” Forbes. 2014. Web.
Lavoie, Andre. “How to Engage Employees Through Your Company Vision Statement.” Entrepreneur. 2017. Web.
Martin, Jacqueline, et al. “The Importance of Inspiring a Shared Vision.” International Practice Development Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1-15. Web.