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Re:Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about th... by jdmichal on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @01:39PM (#11169047)
Strong visions can be arrived at collectively -- but it requires trust, not voting. If I have 10 people, and 7 vote A and 3 vote B, then A should be the collective "strong vision". The thing is, those three people that voted for B still think that B was the best approach, because nothing has worked to change their mind post-vote. It's exactly equivalent to your boss coming and telling you to take out the trash, when you hate taking out the trash. You do it anyway, but you definitely don't put your full effort into it, and you might even implement small sabotages. If the trash bag is leaking, maybe you just let it leak as you take it out, instead of rewrapping it to prevent the leak. So now you have an ideological split that will manifest itself throughout implementation of the vision.

The way to fix this is to have honest, open discussion to collectively arrive at a vision. That way, there is no cognitive dissonance between the vision and the team members. The problem is, this is hard and requires a lot of trust. I'd recommend reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team [0] if you really want to dig into this philosophy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Tea...

Re:Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about th... by js8 on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @03:05PM (#11169769)
But then how is that different from a new boss coming in, having a strong, but different, vision than you?

I don't disagree, but now you seem to claim something else. Originally you just wanted a strong vision with goals, regardless whether the employees agree. Now you want buy-in too.

And there is also principle of subsidiarity. If people strongly disagree on the vision, they can come to some compromise where they realize each vision in their own domains. (As John Carmack put it: "if you are not sure, explore both solutions".)

Re:Employees: looking for “the great boss who cares about th... by jdmichal on Wednesday February 24, 2016 @04:44PM (#11170482)
> But then how is that different from a new boss coming in, having a strong, but different, vision than you?

I don't understand the perspective you are asking this question from. But, my responsibility would be to follow my boss' vision. If it has clear and achievable goals, then it's easy for me to figure out what to do. Visions which are too broadly scoped won't have clear and achievable goals. Visions which are too narrowly scoped is micromanagement.

I might not always agree, but in those cases I will voice my ideas / concerns. After I know I've been heard out, I will defer because it's my boss' decision to make, not mine. As long as my concerns are heard and integrated into the decision, then I should be content.

> I don't disagree, but now you seem to claim something else. Originally you just wanted a strong vision with goals, regardless whether the employees agree. Now you want buy-in too.

There's a clear delineation between leadership -- aka, vision-creation -- and implementation. My original opening of "as an employee" was meant to frame the remainder of my comment as from the perspective of someone responsible for implementing a vision. The remainder of the discussion has been about the leadership side, or how to create a vision in the first place. If you are creating a vision with a group, you need buy-in from the entire group. If you don't, then individual leadership will walk away with differing interpretations and goals, which is what leads to dysfunction. These separate visions will then be pushed down the line, and you will have implementers working at cross-purposes, political infighting, etc.

This ~~synchronicity~~ synchronization on the leadership side is the important part. If a unified vision is being clearly pushed to all the implementers, then the collective action will result in a singular vector towards the vision. If unclear or even competing visions are being pushed, then you won't get collective movement because all the individual actions will be moving towards different results.

> And there is also principle of subsidiarity. If people strongly disagree on the vision, they can come to some compromise where they realize each vision in their own domains.

It's one thing to acknowledge that there are two potential solutions, and as a group decide that both will be explored. It's a completely different situation to have two groups that can't come to terms and are therefore competing against each other.

EDIT: Big words are hard. Let's go shopping.