Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [38]
Instead, the liberating leader must continuously provide employees with information relevant to the strategic vision along with the means necessary for them to do their jobs. When needed, the leader may check that someone facing a big choice understands the likely consequences of that decision. At first, this checking-up may have to be done often, so that the liberating leader can verify both that he has provided the necessary information and means to those employees, and that they have used it all in their decision making. Davids spent those six hours with Curran reviewing her equipment list not because he was looking for ways to cut costs, but to ensure that she had made her choices with the right “why” in mind—“to make the best wine humanly possible.”
Once a liberating leader is convinced that his people have all that they need and are making decisions that best fulfill the vision, he leaves them to act on their own. And even when they ask him to tell them “how” to act, he refuses to take their monkeys off their backs.
At other times, a leader may run into a questionable decision face-to-face, as Bob Davids did when he encountered the used barrels into which Kennison and Curran were getting ready to pour the Chardonnay. Needless to say, people can make questionable decisions that run contrary to the company’s vision. This is no cause for despair, but it is a signal that a leader has more work to do to make those employees own the vision. A leader can’t force people to emotionally own the company’s vision; he can only seek to create the conditions—freedom of action—in which they are convinced of it themselves. As Zobrist explained, trying to impose the vision leaves a leader in the position of a locomotive engine that has lost its cars because the cars don’t feel like going the locomotive’s way.
A liberating leader’s ongoing role is to communicate relentlessly and “lavishly,”7 constantly feeding people new information about the corporate vision. That vision, though, is never static; markets, technologies, and the business environment continuously evolve. Companies that don’t question and renew their corporate visions are bound to encounter rude shocks—especially during tough times. Even a shift in a corporate vision, however, can’t simply be imposed from on high. Here, too, people must have the freedom to question it and may or may not take ownership of it. Resistance should be met with even more lavish provision of information—telling them how to do their jobs at this stage is even more destructive than at the outset, because people will feel betrayed by the denial of a freedom that they have by now come to expect and enjoy. That said, if the opposition is strong enough and resists your best efforts to communicate and explain the change in vision, there may be good reasons. If you come to believe that your employees are right and that the change isn’t feasible, you need to be prepared to change course or return to the former one. One of the great advantages of a liberated company is that it doesn’t wait until customers, stakeholders, or a downturn have called a vision into question—by the time that happens, it’s usually too late. Free employees are free not only to act, but to question those big strategic turns—and to do so while there is still time to change course.
Bob Davids seeks this kind of consultation when he goes out to the vineyard between brand building and bonefishing