As chairman and president of Broadcore Inc., a
70-employee telecommunications firm, you’d
expect Monty Ferdowsi to be
fixated on communication.
And although Ferdowsi says
his fixation is not only because
Broadcore is in the communications business but also because
he believes that communication
is the cornerstone to making
sure his employees know what
to do and how he expects them
to do it.
“A leader should continually
share the passion and energy
with his or her employees and
execute on their day-to-day
tasks to help reach their goals
and the vision,” he says.
Smart Business spoke with
Ferdowsi about how to articulate your vision for maximum
buy-in and how to make sure no
one loses sight of the big picture.
Q. How do you develop a
vision?
An effective leader must provide a clear vision of the future for
the company and get strong buyin from all the employees on the
value of the products and services the company is providing.
But the vision does not just
come. It begins to articulate a
direction where the company
should move to by understanding
what customers and clients value.
That gets reverse-engineered
into what people value, understanding the technology that
leads to the products and what
those products have value on.
(You should) have articulated
that well in advance so that
becomes the vision of a leader
in the company. The products
and services that people value
reverse-engineer into what
needs to be done in today’s time
to be able to have the company
move forward.
A great leader articulates the
vision and will continuously
have that vision in his mind and
will continuously do things that
will lead to the success of the
vision, definitely not thinking
short term, to personal interests
or doing things that are easy
and fun. Instead, leaders must
continuously think about the
long-term vision. If the leaders
can continue to keep that vision
clear in their heads, it’s easy to
not do fun or easy things
short term that get in the
way of getting into those
pitfalls.
Q. How can a leader
share the vision with
employees?
By communicating the
vision continuously so
the employees get the
message. The vision may
be crystal clear for the
leader. He may say it
once, and the employees
may say, ‘OK, I’ve got it.’
But then they go home
and they have a burger
and forget about it.
So the passion that a
leader has for that vision
has to be continuously communicated. There must be continuous reinforcement.
A lot of companies with good
products have a great vision,
but they articulate it once, put it
on their Web site, and it’s gone.
People forget about it. And if
employees forget about it, eventually everybody forgets about
the vision. The leaders who
have articulated it understand
the vision much better than anybody else, so they have to continuously communicate that to
the rest of the team.
