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You know your business needs to change, but you’re caught in the emotional and relational dynamics that are holding you back. Welcome to Noble Metal, the podcast that helps you forge a new kind of leadership. Host Phillip Weiss, a seasoned executive coach and organizational consultant, reveals how to become a more resilient, deliberate, and less-anxious leader.
Through powerful insights based on Bowen Theory and systems thinking, you’ll learn to navigate complex workplace relationships, manage challenging strategic issues, and lead your team to sustainable change. Get the clarity and tools you need to forge a new path for your business.
Ep15
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Without Vision We Perish
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[00:00:00]
Phillip: There's a sentence just seven words long written by one of the wisest leaders in, probably in human history, that cuts in some ways to the heart of every failed team, every struggling organization, and maybe even every family that drifted apart without really knowing why. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
It's from King Solomon, [00:01:00] Proverbs twenty-nine, eighteen. Solomon wrote that roughly three thousand years ago, and yet walk into any company dealing with low engagement, any team that's maybe a little bit paralyzed by decision-making, any family that feels more like a collection of disconnected individuals rather than a unit maybe with a shared purpose, you're going to find that that ancient diagnosis still applies.
Today, we're going to unpack that sentence, or we're at least going to try. We're going to start, not just as spiritual wisdom, but as a-- really as an organizational truth, I think. And we're going to look at it through the lens, as we always do, of Bowen family systems theory, a theory that I consider to be one of the most rigorous frameworks for understanding human behavior probably that was ever developed.
And we're going to bring it down to earth through the story, first of all, of a corporation that nearly [00:02:00] perished without a vision, and then a family that flourished because of it. So a key question we're asking today is what might it actually take, or what might it look like to be a more vision-oriented leader, and what maybe gets in the way?
Differentiation And Leadership
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Phillip: To understand this idea of vision and what I would call goal orientation from a Bowen perspective, we've got to with that foundational Bowen concept, the scale of differentiation or the concept of differentiation of self. So remember, Bowen was a psychiatrist who spent decades observing how human beings function in families and organizations, and particularly under stress. And one of his-- one of Barry Bowen's key insights was that people exist along a continuum in terms of their functioning.
At one end are those who, whose sense of self is deeply fused with the emotional climate around them. [00:03:00] At the other end are those with a more solid, autonomous sense of self. People who can remain thoughtful and directed even when the emotional system around them is anxious, reactive, and pulling hard for them to conform So Bowen described the lower end of this scale with striking clarity, actually.
He wrote, and I quote, that people tend to be, on the lower end, tend to be, quote, "oriented around love, happiness, comfort and security. So much life energy goes into seeking love and approval or attacking the other for not providing it that there is little energy left for self-determined goal-directed activity."
Read that again. So much life energy goes into the emotional field, into the seeking of approval, managing other people's feelings, managing your own feelings of anxiety about the relationship, that there is almost nothing [00:04:00] left for legitimate goals. this isn't a mori- moral failure, so to speak.
It's, it really, in a sense, it's a system reality. When you're constantly regulating your inner world through your relationships, needing that approval to feel okay, et cetera, it's tough to lead. You're too busy managing the emotional weather to look up and actually really maybe set a course.
Now contrast that with what Bowen observed at the higher end of the scale. He noted that, quote, "Each person at the higher end of the scale, that is, is more of an autonomous self. There is less emotional fusion in close relationships, and therefore more energy is available for goal-directed activity." End quote.
More energy is available for goal-directed activity. That is the phrase that matters for leaders here. The more differentiated you are, the more you have [00:05:00] developed what Bowen calls a solid self, the more you can actually define a direction and hold onto it
Sometimes I like to note that a very basic definition of leadership is the ability to bring one or more people to the achievement of a common goal. Very simple. Bring one or more people to the achievement of a common goal. But notice what that definition implies. The leader has a direction. They already have a vision.
They know where they want to go. Without that, there is really, in a sense, there's no leadership. There is only management to a degree of the present moment, managing and reacting to whatever the emotional system is demanding at the time. So where are we going and why? That's a powerful question, whether it's from the top of the organization to individual teams inside of it, or even to families.
Most people in [00:06:00] organizations, families for that matter, want to know that they're part of something grounded and significant. Most people can typically get behind that. Solomon saw this, and Bowen, I think, proved it clinically. So the question is, what does it look like in practice?
Goal Structure Five D
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Phillip: Dr. Dan Paparo, who we've talked about before, one of Bowen's proteges and a longtime faculty member at the Bowen Center, has really taken these ideas into the realm of family and organizational leadership through what he calls the five D model.
This is a framework for assessing how leaders and teams and families actually functioning. What are the high water marks? In his case, what are the five high water marks of successful team functioning? One of these five dimensions is what Paparo calls goal structure. And, and interestingly, it maps almost perfectly, I think, into what Solomon and Bowen were describing.[00:07:00]
Understood, first of all, is that any entity is first trying to survive and ideally thrive. Broadly speaking, I would say that's the vision, survival and success in that survival thriving. This then implies the need, I think, and, and Paparo speaks to this, for a plan, that is the ability to identify and execute on short and long-term goals and ensuring team success in the face of challenge and threat.
Paparo emphasizes that this includes the ability to be realistic in assessing capabilities, realistic in assessing the challenges the team faces, as well as the resources available. So think about that for a moment. A vision-oriented leader isn't somebody who just simply dreams big. They're somebody who can hold that long-term horizon while being brutally honest about present realities.
They don't inflate capabilities. They don't [00:08:00] set goals so vague so that nobody can be held accountable. Instead, they build a bridge between where they are and where they're going, and they communicate that bridge clearly and consistently.
Vision With Accountability
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Phillip: So Paparo identifies in a little bit more detail some criteria for healthy goal structure.
First is, in fact, the development of distinct goals and plans rather than a laissez-faire approach. Vague intentions are not goals. And I wanna kind of tell on myself a little bit. I think earlier on in my HR career when I was leading teams, I often had goals and ideas in my head. I had broad ideas, and the challenge for me and the work for me was to get far more specific.
Secondly, Paparo talks about a general willingness to adapt to needed change. And I think it's really that Paparo embeds that change and adaptability concept here in this idea of [00:09:00] goal orientation. So the idea being that vision isn't rigidity It's a direction that's paired with a certain sort of flexibility so that as things change, as conditions change, there is the ability for the organism to adapt to that so that, again, that it can survive and maybe thrive.
The best of plans are gonna get thwarted, and healthy organizations and entities and families regroup.
Next, there's a realistic assessment of capabilities. Neither overconfidence nor underconfidence serve the team, but what are we truly capable of? Next is the clear and regular communication of both short and long-term goals.
The vision has to live in the team, not just in the leader's head And then lastly is accountability. We touched on this in, in our last episode, and I'm just mentioning it here, but part of driving vision [00:10:00] forward is that people are held responsible for following through. I mean, really, if you think about it, without accountability, a plan is at best kind of a wish.
So I, I believe that Paparo's research suggests that leaders who struggle most with goal structure are, are probably those whose emotional functioning pulls them toward the lower end of that differentiation scale we talked about earlier. They avoid those difficult conversations because they need to be liked.
They keep plans in their heads rather than communicating because, you know, it might invite challenge, or they're just simply not organized enough to put it out there. They fail to hold people accountable because it creates tension. And, and tension, let's admit, is, is threatening I would actually say that the work of becoming a more visionary leader then is not really just a strategic exercise.
You know, we hear a lot about that in the business world. But I think it's fair to say that it's [00:11:00] really actually a deeply personal one So let me tell you a story about a company that nearly perished, not because of a failed product and not because of a competitor who outmaneuvered it, but because really it had lost its sense of direction entirely.
Ford One Plan Turnaround
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Phillip: In two thousand and six, the Ford Motor Company was in a free fall. It had just recorded an eight point five billion dollar loss, the largest loss in the company's history at that point. The culture inside of Ford had become, by many accounts, one of the most dysfunctional in American business.
Senior leaders routinely withheld bad news from each other. Divisions competed instead of collaborating. Meetings, in a sense, were kind of performances rather than honest discussions. There was a term insiders actually used for what happened when difficult information moved up the chain. They would refer to it as getting polished.
Problems were smoothed over, minimized. Anything to [00:12:00] avoid the discomfort of saying out loud that something was seriously wrong. I mean, really, that's a fascinating culture that had evolved. So a Bowen observer would recognize this in some ways immediately. The emotional system at Ford had become so reactive, so fused around sort of this i- idea, the anxiety, I should say, of appearing weak or incompetent, that honest, goal-directed thinking was really nearly impossible.
The energy of the system, lots of energy, was consumed not by building something, but by managing impressions and protecting positions
Then the Ford family brought in Alan Mulally, I believe is how you pronounce his name. Mulally came from Boeing, where he had led a lot of projects, super sharp guy, including the development of the Triple Seven. Which by the way, was a program very famous for breaking down the walls between engineering, manufacturing, and [00:13:00] design that had typically and historically ac- operated in silos.
So he wasn't a car guy. He'd never worked in the auto industry, and he was famously almost stubbornly optimistic, not in a naive way, but in the way that of a man who was not-- he wasn't fused to Ford's anxiety in a sense. He could see clearly because he was, he was from the outside of the emotional system in a sense.
He brought a certain level of objectivity with him The first thing Mulally did was define a vision. Not a slogan, but a plan, specific, measurable, and named. He called it the One Ford plan. The idea was exactly what it sounds like. One team, one plan, one goal. No more warring divisions, no more regional fiefdoms.
Ford was going to act like a single coherent organism , organization moving in a single direction. But in his opinion, vision was alone was not [00:14:00] enough. Mulally had to change the emotional function of the system, and he knew it. He introduced a weekly business plan review meeting that became legendary, actually, in management circles.
Every senior leader attended. Every leader reported on their key metrics using a color code of green for on track, yellow for at risk, and red for serious threat. For the first several weeks, every single report came back, guess what? Green. Everything was fine. Everything was on track, which Mulally immediately recognized as impossible.
No organization in the middle of such a huge loss has no problems , and it has a culture too afraid to name them. Then one, one week apparently a leader named Mark Fields, who actually would later become Ford's CEO himself, walked in and reported a red, a serious production problem in a new vehicle launch.
He'd stopped the launch, and the room actually went [00:15:00] silent. People later described waiting to see what Mulally would do, certain pretty much that Fields was, was done. Instead, Mulally began to applaud. He thanked Fields. He asked who could help solve the problem? And with that single act, a less anxious, clear accountability affirming response, the emotional system at Ford began to shift.
Within weeks, color codes that had almost entirely green began turning yellow and red. Reality started to come into And because reality was in the room, it could be addressed
By 2011, Ford recorded its highest profit in more than a decade. Mulally had not invented a new car, interestingly. He had restored instead a vision and streamlined it, rebuilt a goal structure, and changed the emotional functioning of a massive human system
Where there was vision, the [00:16:00] people did not perish. Instead, they found their footing, and they built something that lasted.
Family Vision Rankins
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Phillip: Now let me bring this closer to home literally. Consider what I would call maybe a composite family.
Let, let's call them the Rankins, drawn from the kind of story that Bowen therapists and coaches encounter pretty regularly Thomas and Margaret Rankin married in their late twenties. They weren't unusually wealthy or unusually gifted. Thomas worked as a mid-level engineer. Margaret was a school administrator.
They had three and a modest home in the Midwest But what set them apart, what their children would later describe as the defining feature of their bringing, was that Thomas and Margaret talked about the future. Not in an anxious and worried way, but in a directed, intentional way. They had what you actually, might call a family vision Each year, usually around the new year, the family would sit together and talk about what they wanted to [00:17:00] build together as a family.
Not just what they wanted to buy or experience, but what they wanted to become, in a sense. Thomas and Margaret had a long-term plan, and their plan being that they would be debt-free by the time their youngest left for college, and they would build enough financial capacity that if one of them lost a job, the family wouldn't be in crisis.
They'd also decided that they would invest in education and character development of each kid in ways specific to who that child was But the vision was not only financial. Margaret kept what she called a formal journal, a kind of a running record of their values, their goals, their reflections on how they were living.
And when conflict arose, which it did at times, the family had a reference point beyond the emotion of the moment. I would call that in a sense it's an, like an anchor. They could ask, "Is this decision consistent with who we said we wanna be?" So in a way, I would [00:18:00] actually call those sort of like operating principles for the family.
We help clients with developing those, these concepts, these behaviors, these agreements for how we're going to behave in accordance with our values, again, that anchor what we do and don't do. From a Bowen perspective, what the Rankins had built was a higher degree of differentiation at the family level.
This long-term plan, I would say, actually served as a kind of, like I've said, anchor. It reduced reactivity because there was always a direction to return to.
The outcome 30 years later was a family in which all three kids had completed college without debt Thomas and Margaret retired with security. More importantly, and this is the part I think that Bowen would probably find the most significant, their children carried the pattern forward. They became adults who could set goals, hold directions, and resist the pull of [00:19:00] short-term emotional relief at the expense of that long-term purpose
Interesting note as I was doing a little research on, on Mulally it was noted that his family, he would hold weekly family meetings where they would discuss similar things like they did at Ford. I thought that was just really intriguing He had the wisdom and the insight to take it beyond just Ford and into his own family life.
Self Assessment For Leaders
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Phillip: Before we close, I want to offer you something practical. Dan Papparo's framework has actually inspired me to take that a little further and create a set of self-assessment statements, in this case, specifically for goal structure. And so I'm gonna... I want to read a few of these.
And as I do, I want you to sit with each one honestly not as an indictment, but really just kind of like as a reading of a compass or a gauge. So consider this. Quote, "I consistently develop both long [00:20:00] and short-term goals for both individuals and the team So if that sentence describes you as a leader, well done.
Truly. If it doesn't quite fit, if the honest version sounds more like, "I don't typically develop clear short and long-term plans," then that's data. That's a starting point. What could it look like for you to move more in that direction and create that kind of clarity? So here's another assessment question or statement.
I clearly and consistently communicate both short and long-term plans or goals. I clearly communicate my plans. Or is it more accurate to say, as I used to do, I tend to keep my plans mostly in my head and share only what I believe is needed in the moment
Final question. I hold both individuals and my team accountable for following through on plans and assignments. Or do you maybe [00:21:00] find yourself struggling sometimes to hold people accountable? So these aren't trick questions. They're an honest-- They're an invitation, I should say, to an h-honest self-awareness, which I think incidentally is one of the most important characteristics of a differentiated leader.
There's a humility there. The capacity to see yourself clearly, honestly, without defensiveness, without self-flagellation, I think that's the beginning of growth.
Vision As A Discipline
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Phillip: Solomon, I don't think was being just poetic when he wrote that without vision, the people perish. I think he was describing a fundamental truth about human systems. We are directional creatures. We like and need momentum. We need a horizon. Without one, we collapse inward, in a sense, into the management of anxiety and that seeking of comfort endlessly.
Bowen showed us, I think, that the capacity to [00:22:00] hold a direction, to be self-determined and goal-directed is tied directly to that work of differentiation, and Paparo gave us even more practical detail. The good news is that vision is not a talent you either have or you don't. It's a discipline. I like that.
It's a discipline. It's a choice. It's something that a mid-level engineer, at a Midwestern company, the CEO or the CEO in a Detroit boardroom can, can practice in different ways at different scales with the same underlying commitment.
Where there is no vision, the people perish. But where there is vision, the people flourish. They find their footing, they find each other, and they find their way forward. Thank you for listening, and until next time.