Common Understanding

Senior Leaders need to ensure that goals and objectives are explicitly stated and commonly understood throughout the organization.

As they strive for success in today’s fast-paced environment, organizations must ensure that staff at all levels share “Common Understanding.” We have found Common Understanding to be the single most revealing diagnostic of the performance and success of an organization.

While Common Understanding is important throughout the organization, it is paramount for Senior Leadership teams. As drivers and shapers of the organization, Senior Leaders play a pivotal role in the organization’s success by releasing and focusing the creativity, innovation, and agility of staff, giving the organization critical competitive advantage in today’s knowledge economy.

Without Common Understanding, individuals rely on implicit assumptions, beliefs and attitudes to shape decisions about business priorities and needs. When Leadership teams and staff share high levels of Common Understanding, however, investments and energies are streamlined and focused most effectively on achieving common goals and advancing the organization forward.

As more and more organizations turn to Quality Management programs to help achieve better business performance, Common Understanding assumes a critical role in ensuring that strategies, plans, and daily decisions are aligned throughout the organization, moving it more effectively towards a commonly-held vision of the organization’s desired future.

In successful organizations, leadership team members share a Common Understanding of the goals, strategies, priorities, and direction of the organization.

It is essential for Senior Leadership teams to monitor and grow high levels of Common
Understanding not only among their staff, but also within their own teams.

Senior leaders are capable, committed professionals working hard to help the organization achieve business success. In successful organizations, leadership team members share a Common Understanding of the goals, strategies, priorities, and direction of the organization. Too often, however, individual team members have divergent assumptions and understandings of the organization’s objectives, and consequently pull the organization in different directions. The result is an organization that is working hard and getting nowhere.

Ron Wiens has spent the past 30 years helping organizations build high performance cultures. His most recent book, titled ‘Building Organizations that Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound’ is a leader’s guide to culture as competitive advantage. To contact Ron, send him an email at ron@ronwiens.com