1: This week in RiseWithDrew, we’ve explored the power of vision to galvanize an organization.
“Reframing the game doesn’t necessarily mean creating a vision that departs from a company’s heritage,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in their powerful book CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.
“Our research found,” the authors note, “that the best CEOs often dig back into a company’s history to find out what originally made it successful and then take central idea and expand it in ways that open up new opportunities.”
2: Case and point: Intuit under CEO Brad Smith‘s leadership.
Intuit’s founding mission was to “end financial hassles.” Its customer-centric vision was to fall in love with customers’ problems, and never the company’s solutions.
When Brad took over in 2008, he simply “refreshed” the mission to “powering prosperity to meet the needs of an increasingly connected world.”
This new vision recognized and celebrated how the company had “evolved our solutions by leaning into the cloud, capitalizing on three macro trends—social, mobile, and global,” Brad recalls.
This new vision catalyzed Intuit into the future, motivating its associates and clients. During Brad’s eleven-year tenure, the company doubled revenue and number of customers and revenue while tripling earnings.
The company’s stock market value grew from $10 billion in 2008 to $60 billion in 2019.
Brad advises new CEOs to have “a vision that is so clear a leader doesn’t have to do anything but get out of the way. That’s the most inspiring vision of all.”
3: Looking backward to the organization’s founding to look forward is a proven strategy that works for many organizations.
“As we already saw, Mastercard’s Ajay Banga was inspired by an old corporate tagline,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik write.
“Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella looked to the origin story of the company that was about building technology so that others can build technology and felt,” the authors note.
“Right there lies everything that needs to be known about Microsoft during my tenure,” says Satya.
McKinsey & Company’s former managing partner, Dominic Barton, states, “As the leader, you have the power—and the responsibility—to raise the level of ambition in your organization.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: How bold am I in setting the vision for my organization, my team, or my life? How can I look to my organization’s founding to find inspiration for a vision for the future?
Action: Journal about what a bigger, bolder vision would look like.
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